Not for me. NiCad was better than the previous generation of batteries, but just barely. NiCads couldn't go away fast enough in my book. I can't think of a single use for which I would prefer NiCad batteries... except maybe ballast under my buffing wheel. :-)
-MIKE- wrote in news:k1b252$8p9$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:
Sometimes it is the execution of the technology. I had a NiCad 9.6V battery-driven Sears (yeah, I know) drill/driver (973.274960) that couldn't hold a charge. I had the 2 sets of batteries rebuilt by Primecell in March '11, and now it holds charge really fine. The old charger works with them. Not an especially fast high powered drill, but now the batteries work fine. It was cheaper (but maybe not that much) than buying a new drill.
NiCd works better for appliances that need a very large current (NiCd has a low series resistance and won't go bang). NiCd is probably better for cordless saws, for this reason. Drills are certainly within the scope of LiIon, though.
NiCds aren't heavy enough for ballast. You need lead-acid batteries, for that application. ;-)
Lookign at what they want for rebuilds now, I don't think they are cheaper than buying new tools. :-(
" snipped-for-privacy@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
I believe this was March 2010. I now have superior batteries.
Lead Acid is one battery that is the exception to my rule that the next gen is always better.... sort of.....
At my last "real" job, I managed and maintained all the audio/video production gear for a college that taught production. The NiCad batts we had for video cameras wore out so fast and were so expensive that I had to come up with a better solution for the students in the field video prod classes.
After researching, I decided that emergency lighting batteries would work great. Video cameras run on 12 volts DC, in an operating range around 10.5-14 volts. These lead acid "brick" batteries would charge up to 14 volts, had an incredibly high amp-hour capacity for the current draw of the cameras, and wouldn't develop a "memory."
I wired two of these "bricks" together in small plastic tool boxes. They would power the cameras for hours at a time and I used simple 12v power supplies to charge them. I recall that it cost me less to make two of these double battery tool boxes for less than a single camera battery. They provided about 20x the power of the camera batts and lasted for years.
They're terrible if you discharge them completely, though. Lead-acid batteries have to be cared for like a newborn baby. They're a natural for car starters or emergency lighting, for pretty much everything else they're sub optimum. I did design some SLACs into a mainframe, a little over 20 years ago (stored crypto keys with power off) but they weren't without problems. LiIon would have been a much better solution today.
The "memory" problem isn't. It hasn't been an issue with NiCds for at *least* thirty years, probably forty. Over-charging or reverse-charging (during discharge) is what kills NiCds.
As long as they're constantly charged and never fully discharged, lead-acid batteries will last a long time. A couple of complete discharges and they're dead. It's rather the opposite of NiCds (there aren't any applications where they can be interchanged - one or the other is sub-optimum).
Until they short out agains't a Field production audio mixer, this was a fix I participated in when working at Shure Brothers many years ago.
The mixer was general toasted.
They were never fully discharged... not even close. They couldn't be, since the voltage operating range of the equipment was so high. That's one of the things that made them perfect, and much, much better than the ni-cads, for this particular application.
I don't know at what voltage those emergency lights operate, nor how far down they would drain those lead acid cricks. But the equipment I used them to power shuts off due to low power long before the batteries were ever in danger.
I generally wouldn't send batteries out to power equipment they outweighed by five fold. :-) I sent them out with cameras that were much heavier.
But I'm curious about how this can happen, if you care to explain what happened in your situation. Are you saying the the battery terminals shorted against the mixer's housing? Or that there was a short in the wiring. Most of our professional and even pro-sumer field gear had internal fusing to protect against current overloads or shorts.
Primary problem was draining the battery when it shorted out agains't the mixers frame, but occasionally it fried the mixer, solution was to put a fuse from the external power jack so it would blow and not drain the battery. This was one of the changes from Shures FP-32 to FP-33.
Mark
I put the batteries in a plastic tool box with an in-line fuse to the
4-pin xlr power jack. I only remember one time having a fuse blow and I never could get a straight answer from the student about what precipitated it. I later discovered a power cable with a slice half way through it. I suspect whatever made the cut had shorted two wires in the cable.BTW, we used a bunch of Shure 4-ch mono mixers. I forget the model number (M267?) but they were probably late 80's models with the big analog needle VU and big round knobs on the front. Those things were workhorses and stood up to a lot of abuse. Easy to repair, too.
As long as they don't do anything stupid when the voltage goes too low for operation, that's a good plan. SLACs are actually great technology as long as you treat them right. They're heavy and not very dense, though.
Emergency lights often run them right down into the ground. The idea is that they're only used for emergencies. ;-) The reason for lead-acid technology, here is their float charge capability. They'll last years without maintenance. Only LiIon is starting to approach that now.
I don't see how that statement wouldn't apply to any battery.
That might be one reason they lasted so long for our particular use.
NiCds don't mind being run right down to zero, as long as the individual cells aren't reverse-charged in the process. IOW, a single-cell flashlight won't be damaged at all by being left on until it's dead. A multi-cell battery will only be harmed if the cells are badly matched. Lead-acids care a *lot*.
Exactly. As long as they aren't run down below about 50% and are otherwise kept charged (on a charger designed for the purpose) they'll last many years. Ten years isn't unusual. The thing that kills car batteries is the heat under the hood. Even then, in the North it's not unusual to have a car battery last eight years.
I remember those I believe they still make them though it has been 16 years since I was in Shures employ. Fixed a lot of them when I worked in the production facility. Though I started out fixing the Home Theater Surround systems, but I fixed every piece of equipment that they manufactured in the mid 80's through about 90 when I moved to R&D. And you got the model number correct.
Mark
About two years here in the Arizona desert.
I know that... I was referring to the "As long as they don't do anything stupid" part.
Being run down that far would be impossible the way we ran them. Like I said... what, four times, now? :-)...... the gear shuts down way, way, way before the batteries are anywhere near discharged enough to have an adverse effect.
You guys made great stuff... great quality, tough, dependable, easy to repair/modify. Shure was always at the top of the list for new gear acquisitions. Shure and Sony never let down.
Well, your camera wasn't intended to use Pb batteries and I've seen many designers do "something stupid". It's easy, when batteries are involved. BTDT. ;-)
Yes, you've said that. I was making a more general point, though. Not all equipment behaves nicely when it runs out of power.
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