Howdy!

In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:
On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 11:59:41 GMT, Doug Miller wrote:
In article , David wrote:

Seems over the top and awfully pretentious. What procedure for TRYING
to save a bad battery pack warrants a patent? When I've had bad battery
packs, I've found dead cells. There's no hocus pocus that's gonna bring
those dead cells back to life.

Google on "revive NiCad battery" and you'll discover that (apparently) there
*is* such hocus pocus.

Well, when I worked in a biomedical engineering lab years ago, we had a
battery rejuvinator for NiCd defib batteries. It'd do a milliamp-hour
check first, then do it's cycle pattern, and then do another analysis
afterwards. Some batteries got drastically better, some stayed bad.
So, from this, I deduce that memory effect _is_ real in NiCd, and given
the proper equipment and/or technique, you _can_ get some of them back.

If you've gotten grain growth in the Cadmium plate, it may be possible
to run the battery down and recharge it at the optimal rate to reform
the crystal structure. If you've gotten dendrite growth, you can fry
the dendrites that are shorting the battery (zap!), but there is a high
liklihood that the problem will recur.

In addition, there are other ways to damage batteries so that they don't
produce the expected level of output that are permanent. The rejuvenator
you describe sounds like something sophisticated that will actually do
the job when it can be done. Randomly trying to run the battery completely
down (as some might try) is a crap shoot.

The response from the seller sounds a lot like he is trying to sell you
dehydrated water.

yours,
Michael


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Michael and MJ Houghton | Herveus d'Ormonde and Megan O'Donnelly
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