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Quick question about cheap charger

NcLnsgeny

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Aug 5, 2019
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Got myself one of those 303's that came with a cheap charger and a 18650 battery that has a weight like it's made out of paper. I ordered both a high quality battery and charger which will hopefully arrive soon. Until then I'd of course like to give the cheap battery a charge with the cheap charger but to be honest I'm afraid as fuck as I've checked out some threads here and saw one where this exact charger started to catch fire. As long as I have the charging battery right there on my table and check it for heat every couple minutes I should be fine no? This whole stuff just feels so cheap that I'm afraid it'll just blow up without a warning but then again I don't know shit about batteries and stuff. What do you guys think? Thanks in advance.

PS I've checked the the battery with a really old tool I had lying around here but which is made for AA's and other more common battery types. I forced the 18650 into the tool to check what it says and it says 2.39 V which sounds shockingly low to me since afaik 2.7 is considered empty. I don't know if I can rely on this tool but is this realistic? It makes me even more worried to put it into the charger.
 





Sunny17

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Nov 2, 2018
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Is it an ultrafire battery? Those are filled with sand usually. Just recycle the charger and battery. It’s not worth experimenting with them.
 

Encap

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If the battery is a decent one then the cheapo charger will charge it---shouldn't be a problem---they do work--just not ideal with readout beyond a color change led
 
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You should never buy your batteries from the same place as your cheap Chinese laser. As far as chargers go, Nitecores are good, but my favorite is the Opus BT-C3100. It is the best all around charger I have seen.
 

NcLnsgeny

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Thanks for the replies. The battery says “Yin Long” and allegedly has 6800 mAh which is alarming even to a newb like me. I only ordered them together because it all came with a neat case and wasn’t considerably more expensive. That was before I read about the problems with customs with shipped batteries though. My guts tell me to keep this thing away from the socket and from what you guys say I think it’s better that way. Guess I will just bite the bullet and wait for the solid stuff to arrive :)
 
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Yeah at best a true 18650 battery won't have a capacity very much above 3500 mAh. I get all mine from liionwholesales.com. Every one of them were measured by me to be what they claimed.
 

NcLnsgeny

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Aug 5, 2019
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Yeah I ordered a Sanyo/Panasonic one with 3500 mAh after doing some comparing on lygte-info.
 

OrangeDragon

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Aug 2, 2019
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As everyone above has said, I'd avoid using those "blue wrapped" batteries that come with stuff. They are always significantly overrated in capacity and have poor current performance.

Batteries should be shipped and arrive at 50-80% charge which equates to 3.6-3.85v with no load, if its below that then the battery is defective or ancient - either way a bad sign. I typically like to charge my batteries to 4.18v (which provides increased lifetime versus 4.2v) and never really let them go below 3.4v - for storage I keep them around 3.8v

In addition to the charger referenced above, I've got a couple of these units that work off Micro-USB and are useful for travelling.
 

NcLnsgeny

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I typically like to charge my batteries to 4.18v (which provides increased lifetime versus 4.2v) and never really let them go below 3.4v - for storage I keep them around 3.8v

Thanks, good to have some numbers to go by for the beginning
 

Laserbran

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Aug 28, 2019
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I ordered 2x 2900 MAH 3.7v 18650 batteries from orbtronic. They seem nicely made and weren't cheap. They have protected circuits as well for extra safety for the batteries and laser.
For charger I went with Nitecore after reading reviews.
 




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