Let me repeat this... The capacity printed on the cell is its
nominal capacity. It is NOT the capacity of that particular
cell. Individual cells can sometimes differ 20% or more from
this value -- usually on the low side.

And you think makers of low end tools care about this?

What does that have to do with the issue at hand?

Cells from the same production run are likely to have similar capacities.
But this isn't always true.

If you are making up your battery pack, you should break in the cells and
measure their capacities, assembling the batteries from cells within a few
percent of each other.


It's important to match the capacity of nicad and NiMH cells, because
they have a very abrupt cutoff. This means that one cell can drop way
low, while the other cells are at a voltage high enough to continue
powering the device. If you let the device run long enough after this
point, the weak cell will drop to zero volts, then reverse, possibly
causing it to leak or explode.

Despite having used re-chargeable batteries from long before they
became a domestic item, I've never known one to explode. But then
I've always insisted on decent chargers.

I've never had the problem, either. But the charger has nothing to do with
it. I was talking about discharge (see above).

The safest way to handle a multi-cell battery pack is to run it until it
just begins to show a drop in performance, then charge it. This reduces the
chance of any cell being driven into reversal.

The more cells in the battery, the greater the chance of reversal.