Rich256 wrote:
Agree. I don't believe in total discharge. I was involved with
recharging banks of NiCad batteries. We never deeply discharged and
had them last for 20 years or more. Of course those were big
commercial units. We never let them get below 50% state of charge.

My theory is that memory only shows up if you repeatedly discharge to
the same level of state of charge. Varying the depth of discharge or
even just one deep one with wipe out any accumulated memory effect.

There may be something to that. I will add one additional personal
observation. It appears that the earlier (like 1970) NiCds did suffer from
the memory effect much more than today's do. It may be due to different
chargers, but I suspect they made some improvement to battery formula and
design over the years. Those old NiCd batteries in the flashes for the
Polaroid 100 cameras all seemed to have the problem. I recovered many of
them for irate customers back then. Two or three deep cycles did the trick.
That and instructions to allow them to discharge fully from time to time,
seemed to make happy customers out of un-happy ones.



I think more important is the number of discharges.

For tools and the like I keep them on a curcuit where I turn on a
switch occasionaly for a few minutes. A timer would work too.


"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message
...
I've read this isn't a good idea. Sometimes one cell goes weak
before the others, and then you get voltage reversal on the weak
cell.

--

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
www.mormons.com


"Olaf" wrote in message
...


I usually tape the trigger on when my Ni-Cd tools run low and let it
completely drain the battery before I charge it. They hold a good
charge for quite a while. I've found the tool wears out before the
battery does... but I'm a little rough.

--
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit