Battery recharging?

[CJRhoades]

The Rayfoss laser I ordered a few weeks ago came today. It has a ZP 2400mAh 16850 Li-Ion battery and an Ultrafire 16340 800mAh Li-Ion battery. The charger it came with can accept either size because the negative end is spring loaded.

When I plug the charger into the wall a green light comes on and the charger emits a slight squealing sound. When I put the Ultrafire 16340 battery in it, the sound goes away, the light turns red, and it appears to charge.

However, when I put the ZP 16850 battery in it, the light either stays green, or, when I move the battery around a little, will turn a flashing red occasionally and the squealing sound gets a little worse. Is the 16850 battery no good? If I put it in the charger JUST right, I can get the light to stay red, but its not a solid red like with the smaller battery. It flashes a little.

When I put the 16850 in the laser, it starts off about as bright as my 5mw green was but it gets dim fairly quickly. Within 60 seconds it's not much to look at.

UPDATE: The ultrafire battery has been on the charger for about a half hour now and the red light is flickering. It's also emitting a chirping sound thats seems to be in line with the flickering light. Maybe it's the charger that's no good.

 

[BShanahan14rulz]

Start charging it outside and keep an eye on it. If you have a volt meter, meter the voltage of the cells. below 2.6V means get a new cell.

I have a generic ____fire wf139 or something like that, and its LED indicators do the following:

green: no cell, or cell is charged
red, green blink for a split second every few seconds: charging, taking voltage readings

My DSD charger did this:
red: charging
green: charged
red-green alternating: bad battery or no cell.

 

[CJRhoades]

Start charging it outside and keep an eye on it. If you have a volt meter, meter the voltage of the cells. below 2.6V means get a new cell.

I have a generic ____fire wf139 or something like that, and its LED indicators do the following:

green: no cell, or cell is charged
red, green blink for a split second every few seconds: charging, taking voltage readings

My DSD charger did this:
red: charging
green: charged
red-green alternating: bad battery or no cell.

Unfortunately, I don't have a voltmeter. I just checked on it again and now it's alternating between red and green. So its gone from solid red, to flashing red, to red/green alternation. Strange..

EDIT: Actually, I wouldn't call it alternating. It's more a solid green with constant red blips.

EDIT2: Well the red got more and more scarse so I took the battery off the charger when it was blipping to red every second or so. I put it in the laser, but disappointed to see that it was no brighter than 5mw. Same as the 16850 battery. After 30 seconds it was dim again so I took the battery out and put it back on the charger. The light is solid red again. The charger can take both kinds of batteries at the same time so would it be ok to charge them both at once even though they're different sizes?

EDIT3: I dunno if it's the laser, the batteries, or the charger, but no matter what I do, I can't get this thing to be any brighter than a 5mw should be. When I put the batteries in the charger, the light goes red and stays that way for around 20 minutes, then it turns green. When I put the batteries in the laser, the beam is fairly visible outside at night for about 20 seconds, then it becomes quite dim. I've about had it with green lasers. This is the 4th one I've had and it doesn't seem to work any better than the other 3 broken one's I've gotten.

 

[BShanahan14rulz]

if the 16340 charges fine but the 18650 doesn't, without a meter I'd assume the 18650 is bad. See if you can't get a different 18650 and try it with that, or stick with 16340.