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FrozenGate by Avery

Who Leaves Their Batteries Unattended to Charge?

out of interest, what would be a good alternative to my USPS cardboard box that holds
16+ 18650s, 6x CR123A's, some 10440's and 14500's?

Is there anything specifically designed to hold a decent size quantity of batteries that wont spread fire if one goes boom?
 





Out side of say a hand made aluminum box or an old army ammo box not too much.
 
cardboard box is nice because it is a small enough space that it is impossible for batteries to short themselves or put themselves in series, and the walls are soft and non-conducting. Perhaps put your cardboard box of batteries inside of an old metal box. Once these things catch, they aren't going to be put out. Only thing you can do is watch 'em burn and make sure they don't burn anything else.
 
jeffreythe00 said:
I would not say I am paranoid. I would say charging Lion batteries is like watching your kids. Just keep an eye out ;)
Click to expand...

I loved that, jeffreythe00!
:beer:

The problem is, that members here who don't have small children, won't understand how it is like with small children...

I also watch my batteries and check on them periodically. If I go to sleep I will wake up no more than 4 hours later and check on the charging condition, even if it is the middle of the night.
 
I have a little charger design sitting on my table - the features are:
  • Up to 2A current (selectable 2A-1.5A-1A-0.5A-0.25A-0.1A)
  • Battery temperature monitoring
  • Automatic charge termination
  • Precharge (can revive some deeply discharged cells)
  • Automatic recharge
  • LED indicator
  • 5-15V input

Would anyone be interested in that? It could either be a WF-188 conversion kit, or a bare PCB with magnetic leads (magnets from sleds CAN be soldered to, they do lose some power but it still works beautifully to connect batteries). I still need to figure out how to hook up the thermistor, the ones at Farnell are poorly documented...
 
BShanahan14rulz said:
The main difference is the protection circuitry built into those battery packs that are in your devices. Single cells have no protection circuitry, or basic over-current/over-discharge protection circuitry, nothing like the packs in your laptop, which include at least 2 thermal sensors, a temperature-sensitive circuit breaker, controllers that keep track of cell counts and individual cells' voltage history, in addition to over-current/over-discharge protection.

And Larry, I'm appalled! What if (I know, hypothetical what-ifs are for pessimists) a component in your PSU went bad? Do you trust every single component that is inside of that? Sometimes it is nice to have a backup safety device, even if it is just you staying aware that you have cells charging and to go check their temperatures with your "biological temperature sensors" from time to time. I trust Sanyo way more than the StartFire brands, but it's still Lithium chemistry. This is an extreme analogy, but just because you use a better brand of dynamite, doesn't mean you can treat them like firecrackers. (Hmm, sounded better in my head... Stupid head....)

*steps down from his soapbox*
Click to expand...

Sure, single cells have protection. Tenergy has a whole range of protected cells.
I agree with what you are saying. Li-Ion cells need to be treated with care as they are potentially dangerous if anything should go wrong.
 
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