Anyone considered using these kinds of batteries for a flashlight? :)
I'm making a "remote battery" briefcase to power lights through a cable, and was originally planning to use some of these: https://hobbyking.com/en_us/graphene-6000mah-3s-65c-w-xt90.html However the blue cylindrical cells look beautiful and cost less per Ah (even though they output less current)
Another benefit is that they are lifepo4 and have 2000 cycle durability compared to the 800 of the graphene lipo batteries...
In my battery case I can only fit 4 lifepos (in series for ~12v, 16Ah total) or four of the lipos (for ~12v 24Ah total but 2x cost)
What should I do?
If you’re ok with the runtime that the Headway lifepo4’s will provide in your application, I’d say rock them out. They are considered safe and very robust. The screw terminals make it easy to make a pack out of them too.
I’ve had good luck with cheap zippy lipo’s from hobbyking. If you don’t need crazy amps there’s no need to get the “graphene” packs. Also, take a look at the multistar high capacity packs.
Well I was thinking I would use the graphene packs (because of their high cycle count for a lipo) for my other projects which can use a few hundred amps, but I could also use the lifepos for the same task if I just put more in parallel…
I think the 2x lifespan and 1/2 price might be worth it in the long run although less convenient to hook up.
Graphene batteries just went on sale… $50 USD for a 6Ah 3s lipo…
Great price! Time to buy 4 of them.
I’ll probably go with these for now and maybe in the future switch my flashlights to using the 40160 cells (because it will be simpler to charge) and also cause the blue cells look really cool
Nice price. Also, if you let the hobbyking page stay open for a few minutes, usually there is a popup that offers whatever you’re looking at for even cheaper.
Yeah I’ve seen that many times, unfortunately it does not seem to work for items that are already discounted
It’s been open for an hour and no additional discount :C lol
Those are usually about $50, which doesn’t seem that bad till you realize you need at least 4 of them to have a 12v power supply
Final edit: so I ended up purchasing the 65C 3S lipos because they went on sale for $43 USD each, nearly half off from the original $78. https://hobbyking.com/en_us/graphene-6000mah-3s-65c-w-xt90.html
I contacted many manufacturers and pretty much all lifepo4 40152 suppliers are in china and shipping to canada would be a pain of import costs, dangerous goods charges, etc etc etc.
I found 0 suppliers of 40152 batteries in canada, and only one in the US: LiFePO4 40152S Cell: 3.2V 15 Ah, 150A Surge Rate, 48Wh with 6M screw Terminal
$40 per battery, and 4 are required for 12v.
So by going with the lipos I get about 10x higher discharge rate and 1.5x the capacity. I think the 1000 cycles of the lipos compared to the 2000+ of the lifepos is not a huge issue, since even in 5-10 years I will not have gone through them all and by then there will be much better technology.
Maybe another time I will go with lifepo4 for a separate project, but not today!
EDIT2 - so I just realized that editing a post makes it come back to the front page again… so much for my stealth editing efforts rather than making a new post…
Beware of HK marketing. They are very good at it. Some of their innovative products are done completely with paper and shrinkwrap. They did this with their [nano] batteries a few years back. Mostly they were an expensive bust. Their own [Zippy] batteries for less were generally better.
If you looked at the specs you could figure out that there was no way in hell that they could function at 65C and some of the other outrageous claims. They would melt wires. People bought them anyway.
The marketing about “graphene” and that stuff can be fake for all I care, what matters is that the batteries perform well in tests.
Whether they truly use graphene or not, they are some pretty amazing batteries:
Over 1k cycles is incredible for a lipo, you usually only see that in lifepo.
I know who [Rampman] is, and those results are quite interesting. OTOH, until they put the actually available batteries in the hands of the masses of consumers I frankly am skeptical. He could have been getting some specially prepared products. The commercially available batteries await real life testing as far as I’m concerned.
The higher amps should help in freezing weather. That’s the only time I have issue with the lower C rating zippy lipo packs in my 650w incan spotlight.