Jeff Wisnia wrote:

IMHO continously trickling a nicad at less than 1/10th of it's
milliampere hour rating (i.e. less than 70 ma for a 700 milliamp hour
cell) does them no harm. ...

Thanks, that's exactly what I needed to know.


"Smart chargers" are used to speed up the charging ...

Makes sense. I was thinking that I needed their ability to
stop/minimize charging when the battery was "full". But, what you said
above does away with that.

I have to change out the nicads in our two Dustbusters about once every
2 or three years. ...

Oh, OK - that's about what the life of ours was. I guess that we just
got a diamond in our first Dustbuster - those batteries lasted 15 years!

Plus, I'd bet the cells in your 9.6 volt unit are tiny
compared to the 3 sub-C cells in my 3.6 volt Dustbsters. ...

Actually, our cells _are_ sub-C.

Methinks that the manufacturer putting a 9.6 volt battery in a
Dustbuster is mainly a "spec race" thing, ...

The 9.6 is much more powerful, but the old one worked just fine, so I'd
agree with you.

Bob