I was wondering how you organise your batteries. Do you have a system?
Right now I have two “collections”, charged and needs charging. I’m waiting for a new charger from FastTech, otherwise they would all be charged. I only have NiMH batteries (mostly eneloop).
I’m trying to keep them in an order so that I am rotating my collection. I’m not sure why exactly I do this. Is it necessary? If it is, how do you store your batteries?
I have noticed some put numbers on their batteries and I thought about doing the same. But I don’t want to start keeping spreadsheets. Maybe this is more pertinent for laptop pulls?
I keep charged & needs charging together. Needs charging just goes in the case with the positive end “down”. Whichever way you decide is “down” in your case I guess.
For multi-cell lights you should always use matched sets of cells (LiIon or NiMH). The cells should be purchased (or salvaged) from the same lot and should not ever be used separately. Uniquely mark your matched sets in some way to keep them matched. This will keep the cells at the same capacity and state-of-charge and prevent cell-reversal disasters. It will also help keep you from accidentally mixing cells from two sets when you change batteries. Mixing charged and uncharged cells in a series connected light can turn your light into a pipe bomb.
Most definitley! They may not explode with as much vigor as LiIon, but they can. The main thing is to prevent a cell from going flat when the others are still pumping out juice. This will kill the low cell due to “cell reversal”… even NiMHs
18650s i store full ones by my lights, and ones to be charged by the charger. and i had started numbering my pack pulls too, just to better monitor. i dont do spreadsheets on them, just if i notice a cell doing something weird i have an identifier to keep a better eye on it
my lifepo4 rcr123a i store in plastic 4 cell cases, and when they are dead i put them back in upside down.
my nimh…? i dont really have a system. all of my aa lights get energizer lithium primaries now. kids toys, wii controllers, who knows what else has taken half of my nimhs anyway lol
I prefer li-ion batteries in flashlights. I have a few, which work with li-ion 14500 and NiMh AA, but usually I use only li-ion (it's brighter).
My charged li-ion batteries are in green battery boxes, the batteries, which have to be charged in white boxes.90% of my flashligts work with one battery and I can use every li-ion battery. For my two flashlights, which need 2/4 li-ion batteries I have one special pack of 4 batteries, which I use for these (other brand as my other batteries - don't need to separate).
I don’t ever keep depleted cells, always charge them as soon as they are taken out of the torch.
Buy them and keep them in sets, on each cell a set number and a bat number (1,2, etc). Also every time the set is charged I put a dot on the #1 cell. Check the voltages after 15mins to make sure they are all within tol. If one is problematic it is chucked and the set is then either used as individuals or divided into a smaller set. Individuals are never made into a set. Oh and no spreadsheet
I used to use a bitsa charger made from an old golf cart lion battery charger and charged my cells in parallel. When it finally went t’*s up I have now gone to a hobby charger.
Keep my sets either in the original boxes they came in or some plastic fishing lure boxes that I had lying around. A friend always keeps his Li in a fire safe (with open door ) and a very large bag of salt under his workbench if they catch on fire.
I’m currently going through some old batteries and trying to revive them. So the ones that aren’t testing well are kept on one side of the plano tackle box and the good charged ones are kept on the other side. All batteries are individually numbered, so I can quickly reference a spreadsheet to see the last time one was charged and what capacity it tested as. Oh and as of right now most of my batteries are charged because most of them are not in use and are seeing lots of refresh/test cycles on the iq-328.
But not charged batteries are always kept separate.
I use the “up” or “down” method too. But only really with whatever cells I have with me at the time. If I’m going anywhere for any time I’ll be taking a charger and will top everything off as required.
For AAs their 0.3l Really Useful Box (Brand name) will take 30 AAs - it isn’t quite tall enough for protected 14500s though. The up and down method works really well with these. http://www.maplin.co.uk/really-useful-boxes-38202
This works for me: As I stripped each laptop pack (only 4 cells each so made it easier), I put each cell batch into a pill container - plastic tube 3” long, ~2” dia which nicely holds four. I knew if I kept all these containers they’d be useful for something. Into each pot I stuck a folded slip of paper with a lined /boxed record of date, charge, cell origins, etc, so as time passed I could see what the charge retention was like and weed out bad ones.
I can tell at a glance when any batch was last charged, what its charge history is and how it’s been behaving up to very recently.
One or two pillboxes have only a couple of cells in, as the bad ones were removed from them.
This now has the major benefit of allowing me to pick up a known good set any time, top-up charge them and use them, knowing they’ll not let me down.
Each pill tube has a snap-on plastic lid, which is very secure and there’s also room inside to allow each cell to sit inside a lining sleeve if I want to make some 4P cellpacks at some point in the future. There’s not a lot of room for them to rattle around anyway and I’d be happy transporting them in these boxes.
I have some Plano boxes ordered via Amazon coming in, and I’m hoping they’ll work ok, because I’m about to get evicted from my kitchen by my wife, with all of the batteries, lights, and chargers on our kitchen counter :)… Amazon, is, however, dragging their feet on shipping, non-Prime :(…
My system is to keep every light possible cocked locked and ready to rock……
I now have a worrying number of pipe bombs on my book shelf…. :bigsmile:
Since I only use 18650 and 26650 cells spare 18650’s live in the large number of cases I’ve accrued, 26650 cells are all in use (I need quite a few more 26650 cells tbh)
Home bargains do some useful storage boxes that may be worth a look
The compartment walls along the length are movable
From looking at the images, it looks like the cells would actually all have + connected and all have - connected, so I think that they form a (parallel) circuit among themselves, regardless of whether or not the the red/black wires are connected to anything outside the carrier.
If they were in series, then what you said would be applicable.
