I use quark aax2. Fully charged my 1 year old eneloop and realise it is very dim.
To be sure, I put it into my razor and the blade run slowly. I changed to a cheap aa and everything was okay.
My question is why is it so? I thought enloop supposed to give the best constant output.
How can I use a multimeter to test it?
Possibly because of voltage… A rechargeable Nimh is 1.2V, the cheap single-use alkaline is 1.5v.
For lights it depends a bit on how they are regulated (boost? direct drive? step-down?), but on a motor it’s easy to notice the difference as there usually isn’t much regulation.
My post will be of no help to you, lipo99, but Im also interested in the same question.
I have few Turnigy AA LSD rechargeable batteries and even tho they all have roughly the same capacity and exactly the same voltage, one of them is visibly dimmer in one of my angle led flashlights.
May be it is because of internal resistance of nimh battery.
That may change over time and may not feed enough amperes to your light.
It is unlikely for a one year old battery to have a problem like this.
First you should try to recharge the battery, if you have hobby charger, use discharge-charge cycle.
If it is again the same, then battery is malfunctioning. That may be a case of fake eneloop.
that's a contradiction. sorry dude.
I think the key here is ‘On paper’. The actual true performance of anything can only be established through testing. I did a little testing with my hobby charger yesterday and established that one of my 14500’s has a much higher IR and ~75% of the capacity of the other same brand cell I bought at the same time. Explains why my runtime was so much shorter with one of them.
What about the charger? That could also be the problem.
Quarks should run fine on Eneloop. A bad cell or a poor charger?
The quark is 2 X AA . Are booth cells equal?
It is probably because of a faulty battery or charger.
A fresh alkaline battery will have higher voltage than a NiMH (Eneloop) battery, but only for a short time.
This means that a fresh Alkaline will give more light/faster razor than a freshly charger NiMH, but only for a short time.
You need to test the battery under load. This requires both a DMM and a resistor (See my DMM guide).
Another way to to do a flash current test, this means using the 10A range on the DMM and short the battery with the DMM to measure the current. This has to be done fast (1 or 2 seconds) or it will damage the battery and might also damage the DMM. This test must not be done on LiIon batteries!
i was checking the voltage of a lifepo4 rcr123a, and forgot to check what the test leads were plugged in to. it was plugged in to the port to check amps. i burnt my finger and was like WTF?!? then it clicked… teaches me to check how my DMM is configured before testing/checking anything
My own rule is never to leave the leads plugged into the ampere sockets, always in the volt/ohm/etc. socket.
Most of my DMM's are fused, i.e. I will not burn the fingers, but might have to buy a very expensive fuse (Local price is around $16). Some of my DMM's does also have alarms or lid's on the sockets.
its supposed to be 10a fused… its just a cheapo craftsman DMM, but works good for what i need and is pretty darn accurate.
ive been making sure i swap it back after checking amps lately too…
To the OP:
How do you charge your cells, and how do you use them?
Could they have been overcharged or over-discharged a few times?
I would cycle them through a few total discharge/charge cycles and then check them.
Be careful with multiple cell lights. Over discharge can ruin a cell very quickly.
Using eneloop charger. I not sure whether they are under or over discharged