Broken Charger outputted 1.5V to various Lithium cells

I have a charger which seems to have crapped out, and is outputting 1.5V.

Before I noticed something was amiss, I ran a few 18650s through the charger and it all those batteries now read varying voltages, from 0 to 2 V.

After throwing away that charger, is there any way to revive these cells? Putting them into another functioning charger seems to just make the charger flash, instead of its normal charging light.

What has worked for me in the recent past is to hook the low-v cell up in parallel to a known good, fully charged cell for a minute or so at a time. Hook the cells up for a minute, then try the low-v cell on the charger. If it starts, let it charge. If it doesn't repeat the hook up and try again.

What this does is to bring the low-v cell above the charge threshold voltage. If they are protected cells though, all bets are off. There are ways to reset the protection circuitry, but the above is not one of them.

-G

Thanks!

Gadget said:

What has worked for me in the recent past is to hook the low-v cell up in parallel to a known good, fully charged cell for a minute or so at a time.

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Of course, if the low voltage cell has a short, you'll need a new face after that stunt. :undecided:

and then your face will be hard to look at like that of Freddy Krueger crossed with the map of Utar.