Battery life woes...

[brooxy]

Hi,

Just got a quick question about the way batteries work. Will a speed charge damage the battery at all?

My gun (TM MP5 PDW), didn't perform all that well on sunday's skirmish. Battery was flat by lunchtime, and after a fast charge by the shop, it only made another hour or so.

Usually it will last about a day - it's a 1500mah line battery, which fits in the gun along the top of the gearbox.

Just seems odd that it didn't last that long. After each skirmish I discharge the battery and give it a charge prior to gaming. Usually this is a speed charge with a tickle charge every third skirmish.

If it's not the battery, are there likely to be any faults with the actual gun that could cause it to drink power so fast?

[Boo-Sabum Ben]

Re: Battery life woes...

Well, batteries dont last forever. They will die eventually.

Yes, fast charges kill regular Ni-Mh batteries a little bit each time, as does over charging them. I used to leave my batteries overnight to charge, then they died, and I discovered that simply whacking them on charge for huge amounts of time kills them a little.

[SAS Scott]

Re: Battery life woes...

yer i charge over night but my charger stops when charged

[Fizzy]

Re: Battery life woes...

Ni-Mh batteries tend not to like being discharged all that often, and a full discharge can actually damage the cells. They also don't like to be charged above 1C (in your case 1.5A) either.

[brooxy]

Re: Battery life woes...

Ahh ok. Ta for the advice. I'll pick some new batteries up, skip the discharging and stick to long charge permanently

[richardy]

Re: Battery life woes...

New tech like nimh is pretty forgiving..

chrging to fast can speed up how fast they eventually die

as can charging them to long on slow charge..

Truth is your safer than you think.. your got 2000 charges suually on a battery of any type. traditionally dont go higher than 3a on the charger, i stick to 2a.

The best thing you can do is get a charger like the IMax b6 as its nimh functions are great..

Including a cycle charger feature which will discharge and recharge a battery up to 5 times without you having to touch the battery you can actually watch it on screen recovering lost mah by the 5th cycle..

The imax has safety features, and makes life so simple.. it takes the thought out of charging.. you just press a button.