On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 17:04:29 -0000, Michael Houghton wrote:
Howdy!

In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:
On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 16:23:13 -0000, Michael Houghton wrote:
Howdy!

[snip a whole bunch of stuff where we are in fair agreement or better]

Oh now, where's the fun in that?

Did you actually follow up on my "Do A Google Search" to see what I was
looking at?

Well, without knowing which search terms you used, it's hard to know.
But, yes, I'm familiar with the chemistry and terminology involved, as
well as the various failure modes.

My bad. I DAGS for "nicad memory effect", and the first two hits were
productive, one being the sci.electronics FAQ.

Cool, I'll check that out.

Now, I'm not an electrochemist, but I had no trouble discovering this
information online, nor in corroborating it from multiple sources.

Well, put it this way...we used to use a charge/discharge cycle device
to increase the capacity of NiCd battery packs. The diminished capacity
appeared similar to the memory effect, and the improved capacity
afterwards appeared similar to a memory effect being mitigated. The
effect may have been something not technically "memory", but the
usability of the battery was effectively the same as if it was.

OK. That makes sense. I'm just twitching at the misuse (widespread) of
the term "memory effect" as it applies to NiCd batteries, since it
also serves to gloss over mistreatment effects by the end user.

Well, in the case of these defib batteries, it was mistreatment that
caused it, but that's the nature of a defib. They sit for long periods
of time, interrupted by very occasional intense discharge cycles -
usually for the monthly or weekly calibration and recharge time checks.
A defib probably gets discharged in testing 100 times for every time it
gets used on a patient. So, the batteries sit at full charge, with the
charger on 'em, nearly all the time. But, the need to have it usable
outweighs the cost of the deterioration of the battery packs. Medical
devices are a strange world, where "do something that'll hurt the
batteries in the long run, but test it and get rid of them before 'the
long run'" makes some sort of sense.

But, as far as language and terminology, if it acts like "memory", and
smells like "memory", and gets fixed the same way one fixes "memory",
then it's memory-enough-ish for me.