I have 8 AAA 900mah Soshine batteries that I bought from DX a while back, perhaps almost 2 years ago. 4 of them were never used, and were sitting in a plastic holder in my apt, the other 4 were maybe used a couple of times, but the last year or two were in my car again in a plastic holder. I recently got a digital multimiter and a battery tester, and decided to test the batteries. They were all around 1 volt - 10%. I charged them using the Soshine SC-U1 charger (got from DX a couple of years ago, but without batteries http://dx.com/p/soshine-sc-u1-4-slots-aa-aaa-battery-charger-w-2700mah-aa-ni-mh-batteries-black-207952 ), but to my surprise most were charged very quickly, in 10-15 minutes. One or two stayed for a long period, almost 2 hours. After the charge all were around 1.35–0.05 volts. But they don’t seem to last that long.
So, here are my questions.
1. Could they have lost their capacity if they haven’t been used all this time?
2. If yes, is there a way to revive them?
3. I do not have a reliable way to test their capacity. Does the quick charging mean they don’t have much capacity?
4. Could it be that my charger is bad? I didn’t find any reviews here. I tried to test for the charge current using the tinfoil method in this guide Simple guide to using a DMM for measurements | Candle Power Flashlight Forum and it shows periodically 350mA, and then 0mA for a second.
1. Yes for sure.
2. If there is no spillage, you can use higher voltage to charge it up for a short time to revive the current. But it would be dangerous
3. Yes, but it depends on the output of the charger
4. Not sure
But if you are sure your battery is bad, you can get a replacement battery by searching Batterybay on google. They have variety of battery and there should be on that suits your case.
I recently found some old AAA cells that had been unused for who knows how long, probably a couple of years and they were dead. I charged them up and they only had about 25-30 mAh capacity. As I cycled them on the C9000 they eventually ended up at about 600mAh. This was after about 6 cycles. They went from about 25 to 200 to 400 to 500 to 600. I didn’t really keep track, but it was nice to notice the progression. I didn’t even use the recommended method of .1C, but rather fast charged them. It still brought them back. I was impatient and lazy and figured I had nothing to loose as I have plenty of other, better cells.
Soshine what? Discard them.
Buying Chinese fire and shine is overall a bad investment.
Get a charger that can measure capacity and has more options for charging.
Yes all batteries lose capacity even if stored properly. Nothing lasts forever but so far my batteries seem fine. Might have to cycle them soon to revive them.
I don't recall any incidents with nimh batteries. I'd buy new quality replacements, but I wouldn't throw away the old cells unless the space was needed. At worst they can be charged when needed for use in a loaner (aka, donor) light.
You are right. so for the fun of it I will do this and report back later. As I said, I have other, newer cells, in better condition. So why would I bother? But actually it will be interesting to see how much better they can be.
I just finished running the break-in program on those cells and there was no significant change. So in this case, 5 or 6 cycles of fast charging was about as good as the lengthy break-in procedure. As I said, I have newer better cells now anyway.
I ran all my old AAA batteries through several discharge-charge cycles, and all of them showed considerable improvements. I do not own chargers that will do the discharge and measure capacity, so can’t tell how much they improved. I just used my Ultrafire M5 R5 single AAA flashlight to discharge the batteries and to compare their capacity by how long the flashlight ran.
Learnt lesson about keeping batteries clean. Wasn’t getting power in electric shaver. Cleaned positive and negative of batteries with eraser and working again.
But it is my understanding that NiMh need several cycles to build up to their full capacity and that there will be some loss with age in all rechargable cells/batteries whether used regularly or not.
It’s worth trying if you want to and the results will be interesting regardless of the results.
They not only lose capacity and charge over time but internal resistance rises too.
This is not as bad with quality cells like eneloops but who knows what the soshines really are.i dou t they are anywhere near the quality of eneloops.
