I was just going through some 2005 photos and found one I took at work. Some of my crewmen setting up a battery room.
I was a service engineer at Enersys-Delaware
BTW: That is only half the room, there was an identical setup on the other side.
Hi, Many of them but not really large in size. telco Switching plant battery bank had lot bigger wet batteries.
Yep. IIRC it was around 1988 when Exide sold a stationary battery bank to a power utility in California. The cells were approx 12" square and there were something like 5000 of them. It was called the "mile long battery".
Side note: Enersys-Delaware was spun off from Yuasa-Exide. Yuasa bought a five year controlling interest in Exide. Prior to that , Yuasa-Exide bought out the independent distributor I had originally worked for.
After the "spin-off" , Enerysy-Delaware manufacturered Exide batteries and chargers but were /not/ allowed to use the name "Exide".
Those who owned the name "Exide" did not have a product...so they in turn purchased Gould National Battery (which previously had purchased Chloride Battery).
Since the distributor I originally worked for was a Chloride distributor...having never changed jobs....after 38 years I ended up working for a company that originally was a competitor.
It is a difficult story to explain to my friends so I just tell them:
Thing of it this way: "General Motors now builds Fords
and Ford Motor Company now builds Chevys."
It looks like they're set up to do something, not just wait until they're needed. What do they do?
Those are batteries for forklift trucks. The battery extractor is the item you see at the back of the photo. It can extract a battery from a forklift and go up four levels to retrieve one.
Propane forklifts are rarely used in warehouses any more and are mostly used for extremely large loads, OTOH: The batteries pictured here are merely average size. They can be as large as 4000# and require a completely different system to install and extract.
Are they wired for action, or just being warehoused?
That is the charging station. Chargers on top...batteries on the bottom four rows. The forklift drivers have their batteries changed when they are at 80% discharge.
Ah, that's interesting. The only time I've worked with battery fork lift, had to drive the lift to the charger, and plug in the big cable. I guess one was a Clark, and had on board charger. Plug into 110 VAC socket.
Looks like extra bother, to pull the battery out for charging.
These trucks are run 24/7 so the batteries need to be changed about every eight hours or so. The chargers use 460v 3phase.
I was in the battery room when the warehouse experienced a momentary power failure. The chargers are designed to restart randomly over a five minute period after such a failure. It would not be good if they all started at once!
Our company also sold a special "quick charge" battery and charger in situations where it would be impractical to change batteries.
The driver would just put the battery on the charger whenever the truck was not being used. The chargers and batteries had two sets of cables on them...each set could be up to 250 amps (for 500 amps total).
The first time I had to work on one of them I got a bit nervous.
The chargers obviously can be turned off...but in the case of changing a battery connector you have to be careful!
Much to my surprise, the batteries did last as long as their warranty period. I thought for sure they'd "burn out" in a year or two.
Post-merger names
In the wake of the Exxon/Mobile deal and the AOL/Netscape deal, here are the latest mergers we can expect to see in the coming months:
Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush and W.R. Grace companies will merge to become - Hale, Mary, Fuller Grace
Polygram Records, Warner Brothers and Keebler Crackers will merge to become - Polly-Warner-Cracker
3M and Goodyear will merge to become - MMMGoodJohn Deere and Abitibi-Price will merge to become - Deere Abi
Zippo Manufacturing, Audi Motors, Dofasco, and Dakota Mining will merge to become - Zip Audi Do Da
Honeywell, Imasco and Home Oil will merge to become - Honey Im Home
Knott's Berry farm and the National Organization of Women will merge to become - Knott NOW
Well, with three shifts running the forks, I can see it's easier to swap em out to charger. The fork lifts I've run have been used a couple hours a day. not all day and all night.
On 01/06/2014 08:22 AM, Stormin Mormon wrote: :
LOL
When I was a kid, Mad Magazine came up with some great logos depicting very interesting mergers.
My favorite was the Dutch Boy paint/ Sherwin Williams merger
The boy was sitting on top of the earth with paint being spilled over his head!
I miss the old Mad magazines. They are probably still in business, busy lampooning all those who need be less serious about themselves. And back in the day, they didn't need to be sexual about everything.
Yep. In a single shift operation just one battery per truck is needed. Most of my customers ran at least two shifts and many were 24/7
That is what I especially liked about my job: I typically started at 4 or 5 am and since I did not have to deal with traffic got a lot of work done and got home in the early afternoon. Of course if there was an "emergency" I had to go back to work, but that did not happen more than once a week.
Probably the funniest thing that happened to me was I had a train a new employee one day. At ten AM I got /exceedingly/ tired and said, "I am really sorry but I just have to go home and go to sleep." He sure looked at me funny. I apologized and said that I just did not know what was the matter...until I realized I had started at midnight!
We both had a good laugh and I don't think I ever got to work that early again!
I guess they are still around but I have not seen one in years.
As a kid, it woke me up and caused me to start questioning things in both the advertising and political arenas.
Good to know. Thanks.
>
It's still around:
So is The Onion:
And there is The People's Cube:
I'm from Milwaukee and the Onion started here. They exist "on-line" only now.
Anyone know who makes the Walmart batteries, they seem to get fairly consistent above average ratings by Consumer's Reports over many years?
Probably Johnson Control
Note:
For the most part all battery manufacturers have pretty decent standards but any specific battery size usually has at least two or three different "grades".
It is important to check the ampere-hour rating of the battery.
For the most part, they seem to be rated mostly by cold-cranking amps. That is a number you can use for comparison if AH ratings are not available.
The number and the size of the battery plates is the determining factor. IOW: You can have two batteries of the same physical size, but the number of plates inside and their size can vary.
Rule of thumb:You can tell how good a battery is simply by picking it up. The heavier it is , the better.
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