Charging & cycling nicds and nimhs with a turbo 35

[sacky07]

hey all,

I believe this is my first post. sighned up when i saw the old school electronics forum im try bring back to life some sanyo nicd 2400's and some nimh mached packs from the racing days. Can someone tell me about the lost art of cylcing and macthing these old round cells? i picked up a turbo matcher 4 also. I was gonna buy some new loose cells and match them my self just for pure sport. any tips or links would be muchh appreciated. Thanks

[Charlie don't surf]

Depending on which T35 you have (Turbo 35, Turbo 35BL, Turbo 35 GFX) you can set you cycle rate for charge (up to 25a) and discharge (up to 40a), and record your numbers from packs or individual cells. The 2400 NiCad's will prob revive, the NiMh will prob look good on cycle numbers but have a really high IR and get really hot and flat. Lmk which you have and I can get more detailed-

[sacky07]

I have a 35BL charger. im matching/cycling them on a turbomatcher4. i did 12 of the 2400's which are around 11 years old. first 4 charged at 2a and dis. at 20a. 2nd and third batch charged at 5a/dsg at 20a, and one cell from each cycle hissed and melted the plastic. :-/ what is good IR? from the 12 cells i did. i got 3 that had a IR in the 40's. the rest were 60 and up which i dont think is good. the Mahr/mwhr are around 1200 for the best cells. what numbers should i use to cycle these? i just guessed but im thinking the 5a charge was too much. how many times should i cycle them until i know what im getting is as good as it gets? also what is DET? the cell labels show a number of 5000. im assuming thats was the DET when they matched the cell originally. first run i went with a DET 1000 then saw labels changed it to 5000 and charged at 5a also what cell labels showed. should i be gentley cycling these back to life or??? any help would be appreciated. also on another note when cycling a PACK on the turbo35bl when it goes to dsg it will only go for about 10 seconds before it tells me to check pc cable? iv tried several times and only once had a PACK dsg correctly to finish the cylce. thanks a ton!

also, what what should my peak detect be at? i had .03. is this whats causing the cell to melt down or the charging amps? thanks again for the help!

[Charlie don't surf]

It's been a while since I've had a BL in front of me (I still use 2 GFX's converted to lipo) but as memory serves the average charge amps for a pack was 5-8a (but we did push brand new cycles packs @12a++). Those ir's are crazy high (due to storage time) 1.2's-1.5 avg ir was really good as I recall. .7 peak detect seems to stick in my head, but tonight I'll get on one and check some settings and get you more info-

[Lonestar]

It doesn't necessarily answer your direct Q - but the best way I found to revive high-IR Nickel-based cells (ie all the SubC's that are still of interest to us vintage enthusiasts) is a Spintec device - it's a "flex" discharger in essence, it does miracles. Trinity also sold a similar device, and so did Tamiya. They aren't that easy to come by as they came to market only a short while before lipos took off, and they were expensive too bitd.

Paul

[sacky07]

im after the basics of cell cycling. why are some cells burning up and others not?

[Lonestar]

im after the basics of cell cycling. why are some cells burning up and others not?

new cells don't burn often - older cells do. Simply because the chemistry in them has aged... you can partly revive them but their IR will still be junk.

a very good site with LOTS of info - best out there:
http://batteryuniversity.com/

Paul