Battery Discharge Graphs and comparisons

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Thought I would start putting up some graphs for some batteries that may be vaping related. I have heaps of tests of many batteries but will stick to the popular ones for now.

It's getting a bit late so I'll just put up the graphs and come back and comment later.

Just a note, there is a 60mv loss per amp on the left axis that seems to happen on every machine I have and is the best I can get it using gold contacts, clamps and thick short wires. Total loss through connections and cables total less than 5mv per amp, the rest is in the machines. So if it says 2.2 volts at 5 amps, it is really 2.5 volts at the battery etc. but it's all relative anyway.


from left to right.

14500's at 1 amp 16340's at 1 amp, a couple of batteries at 10Amps, protected batteries at 5amps, unprotected batteries at 5amps.

I put in a couple of popular ebay ones in there just to give a relative indication of what we are looking at. Two of the best sellers (thousands sold) are in there. Namely Ultrafire 4000mAh from ebay canada and blue 16340's from ebay USA.

 

Bit hard to see the colours. May edit pictures later.
Oh, bottom axis is time (seconds)

 

the ebay 16340 jobby certainly sucks.

what do you use to test with ?

 

Yeah, unfortunatley there are plenty around like that. I picked a couple of comparo's that don't cross over so much and easier to read.

0to1 amp, imax b6, 1-5amp imaxb8+, 5-10 amps imaxb8+ and imaxb8. Logview software. I used to use a $600 jig before I blew it up and found it to be no more accurate than the plain old Imax. They do have a limited hidden calibration feature. There is also a components kit to help improve accuracy but I don't think its worth it. If you know where the inacuracies are, you can compensate eg, the B8 draws 5.05amps at 5 amps and the B8+ 4.95 amps at 5 Amps. But being relative, it doesn't really matter as long as all batteries are treated the same.

I'll put some more up later. The AW's in 18500 and 18350 size seem to be really good.

 

hey SS,
I've got an Imax C-403 that I used to use to charge 18650's one at a time in.
Is this a charger i should look at using instead of my Ultrafire/trustfire Dual battery charger? and will it look after the batteries better?
Just interested .comse from memory everything on the iMax used to come off at 4.2V where the other seems to be 4.1V even with new batteries.

ps, when you gonna start stocking AW's in 18500 and 18350 size

 

I have been charging virtually all of my batterys with an imax B6 for a year or so, its not so good on protecteds, it was not designed for it so it takes longer and slows to a trickle due to fixed 4.2v output, it also needs good solid wiring and decent clamp to work at much more than 1A or so.
Its nice to see the mAh being put into each cell as you go though. Lets you know if there is something odd going on with the mod or give you an idea how low you went with a mecha mod.

 

couple of things, with the imax, there are two settings, LiIon (4.1v) and LiPoly. Make sure it's on LiPoly (4.2V). If so, then put a volt meter on the battery (not the contacts) and compare the voltage to the imax. If it is out, there is a calibration setting holding buttons while turning on, to fix it. Can check it out later , at work till late tonight, typing fast. Also, check contact resistance in connections snd springs. If you charge at 1 amp, it will terminate at 100ma but if resistance is high, voltage drop will be high. To fix, do second charge at 0.2 amps and it will terminate at 20ma. Better for batt not to charge to 4.2 anyway.

There are two common ultrafire chargers. One pulsates the crap out of it with minicycles. 2 steps forward and one step back, wears the battery out very quickly, bad design. Charges and discharges at the same time and pushes voltage up to over 4.3v to end at 4.2. Put voltmeter on battery while charging to check it out. Battery ends at 4.2v but when you test capacity, it will be down by 20% compared to a clean charge. As far as I know, both ultrafires have 1 power source and a switching thingy so charge time slower with 2 batts instead of 1.

Imax is clean. Soshine is clean and indepndant. Both better for the batt but in reality, you will probably wreck the battery in other ways before you wear it out. (with quality cells that is). haven't checked xtar but it is 500ma charge which is very slow for high capacity batts so haven't bothered with it. Multichannel chargers are much more convienient that using imax, but both will do the job

sorry about rushed response

 

oh, and anyone who bought an early ECDmeter and got the USB dongle has all the tools needed to use logview software if they get an imax B6 or B6AC.
the connector on the side puts out TTL serial data at 9600 .comd.

 

Which protected cells are you using? If the PCM has high resistance, it will slow down the saturation phase by heaps due to voltage drop.

Should be ok with quility protected, you will notice it gives a big zap before it comences to wake them up if need be.

 

I thinks that's a bloody great idea and was hoping to getting around to figuring out the hookup.

 

Oh, and when the battery has high internal resistance, the voltage rise is a lot higher, slowing down saturation phase too. Voltage rise, voltage drop within the battery??? suppose depends on which way you look at it but think of the battery resistance as part of the whole circuit.

 

The 3 output wires are gnd, Tx and 5v .. do you only need 2, from memory the pin closest to the rear is gnd, the centre is TX and the not needed fron one is 5v. check with a MM first though, also have to go into the imax menus and ensure USB is turned on instead of thermal. It uses the same connector for an external thermistor.

protected cells .. madbunnys 3400mAh pana, 2500? protected imr and a crappy trustfire that came with a 18650 torch and thats all its good for.
it terminates early is all as even on the 1A rate it probably is down to 100mA by about the 4.1v region. So unless you do the double charge it never fully charges, its only 10% low though and isn;t going to hurt the cell any.

 

question: how does the Panasonic IMR 18650 2250mAh Li-MN fare up with the MNKE IMR 18650 Li-MN ?

 

The protection circuit used is probably adding too much resistance in those ones.

I have had 2 experiences with MNKE 18650 IMR.
experience 1 was it was counterfeit and couldn't put out 1000mA.
Experience 2 was they were not IMR or high current and barely put out 2000mAh. So I suppose it depends as there a a few different ones floating around and is another brand prone to fakes. When I get home, I'll try and find the graphs of MNKE. The Panas 2250's are really good and always consistant (until someone fakes them anyway), so the panas would have been much better in that experience.
Generally my experience so far with other sizes etc with MNKE is it is an ok brand but consistancy is low.

Got to get back to work.

 

Sorry D1Git, I read your post wrong in a hurry. Got it backwards, Will fix later.

 

It's funny ... I always charge my LiPO's on the LiLO setting ... extends the life of them especially as I only ever drain them down to 3.75V

 

no sweat mate. was kinda wha?
D1g

 

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Ok cruz, here are graphs of the Panas cgrch vs the mnke-imr (probably fakes) at 5 amp and the (probably fake) mnke on its own.

The UF charger I was talking about is the 188 model.

 

That's it. I've read my posts and I'm not playing while I'm working anymore

 

Ok, I'll get it the right way around. The hobby chargers are usually better for the batteries than some other chargers like the UF-188. As gt said, the life is also greatly extended when charge to 4.1v if you are in a situation where you don't need the extra capacity of 4.2v charge. Something to consider here is that you are supposed to get 500 cycles in quality cells or more when you go through the full range of capacity. Maybe 1000 if you don't go to fully disharged and maybe 1500 if you also don't go to full charge.

That's a hell of a lot of cycles and it would take years to get there if you only vaped with one single battery every day. So in reality, the age / storage conditions etc of the battery will hurt it faster and is more significant than the cycling of it.

For the Imax, if you want to lower the final charged voltage, two usual options are
1- do the LiIon instead of LiPo as GT said
2- pick fast charge option in LiPo and it will terminate charge earlier.

I prefer option 2 as it reduces charge time.

Sorry about messing up my previous posts, was distracted and in too much of a hurry