Extremely simple Universal Ni-Cd Battery Charger teardown
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- čas přidán 2. 08. 2024
- Teardown of a very common Universal Ni-Cd Battery Charger. The circuit turns out to be remarkably simple, there is not even a full wave rectifier...
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7:17: what a coincidence: that type of lightbulb techmoan was looking for CorgiVision restauration yesterday...
O.k, different voltage....
I still have that charger, 100% the same. bought at 1986 for my tayo rc buggy.
O h wow isn't that the light bulb Techmoan was looking for? 😁
We used to have the exact same charger. Eventually all the red leds were burned out. I guess that's due to the lack of proper current limiting...
My dad had similar charger in the late 80’s but it was slightly different design with a light grey base and a transparent cover. It was the first time I heard of rechargeable batteries, he used Panasonic ones with it, I remember he used them for a photo camera. I wouldn’t be surprised if got from Conrad.
This is a very old charger sold by Aldi times and again, way back from the 1980s onwards, along with their infamous "Topcraft" branded NiCD Accumulators which (especially the brown ones) hardly held any load charged into them ... Nowadays, their chargers are more sophisticated and - depending to the model - they can even charge Li-Ions...
This charger was likely bought at Aldi some time in the 90s or even early 2000s, judging by the original box I forgot to show in the video.
I have on of these too, but branded as a "Vanson". Good for backup and to bring back 0V batteries to life when more recent chargeras fail. These also takes C and D cells which can be useful, but it takes forever to charge like a 5000-ish mAh cell 😀.
We had one of those about 20-30 years ago. Worked fine for many years.
I used to have the exact same in about 1990. I quicky replaced it with a *slightly* more advanced charger using a capacity switch, timer, and discharge function that did not fry your batteries as long as you selected the right capacity. 500, 600 or 700 mAh. And then one that actually detected when the battery was full and shut the charger off.
Dr Cassette kinda swag
I have the same exact charger, bought in a Lidl store in Germany in, I think, 1999. Still works fine, but charging a modern NiMH AA Cell with 2500 mAh takes about 31 hours at only 120 mA. At least this low current should be very gentle on the cells.
Very interesting to see what's inside!
It is my first charger form 1992 :-) It still works for totally discharged batteries where other "intelliget" chargers do not.
That's not a charger, that's a grill...
Hooking the mains directly to the battery contacts this would be much more useful for grilling small sausages :)
Die Teile hab ich in den 80ern in meiner Ausbildung verkauft, für 29,95 DM.
I have similar charger (also from Germany) that is almost identical to this one, i think it's from 90s or early 2000s. It still works fine (it's not like there's anything to go bad lol), we always used it with cheap timer socket. I remember that i disassembled it once, can't remember if it has full bridge rectifier. Interesting design for sure, i bought a cheap USB charger on ebay that worked on similar principle, i only bought it because i like those spring contacts and it was like 1$. I was thinking about adding microprocessor to it but later bought Litokala Lii500 which is amazing.
Using the charger in combination with a timer is a great idea.
NiCd are not picky with waveform as long as the mean is positive... I lived with this for a long time + a kitchen timer 😜 Great video as always!
Thank you :)
Certainly not great but it looks a lot worse than it really is, NiCd batteries will disappate any extra energy you put into them as heat when they're done charging and since they're batteries there's no need for full bridge rectification or smoothing capacitors. Definitely wouldn't want to try something like that on a lithium cell though since it would almost certainly explode. It isn't ideal that it won't turn itself off after a while but that's just how NiCd chargers are usually made.
I just read some of the rechargeable battery articles on Wikipedia and you are indeed correct, for NiCd this charger apparently is not too bad. However, all the rechargeable AA and AAA batteries I have are NiMH, and those would be damaged by such a primitive charger.
@@DrCassette Right, the kind of circuit you have is really common in these style chargers at 0:35 in this video czcams.com/video/5cBQ786lyPA/video.html DiodeGoneWild also measures their waveforms and you can see they're not super clean constant DC like you'd expect from a lab power supply, batteries don't really care much as long as you stop charging when you're supposed to and don't charge them with too high of a voltage, other than that you can pretty much feed them any kind of unfiltered DC and they'll take it as they are basically very large capacitors. I'd also recommend checking out DiodeGoneWild In general as his content is really great :)
halfwave is good for transformer. it will be cooler than fullwave (increasing lifespan)
My grandparents had one of those in the early 1980's with Hitachi Ni-Cd batteries. That light bulb indicator was not a lot of use. If I remember correctly AA batteries took about 5 to 6 hours to charge but C batteries which they used for a radio took about 12 to 15 hours so had to be left on overnight.
I had one exactly like this, worked well for being a cheap thing. I think I gave it away when my NiCad batteries were getting too old.
Thank you !
this charger does not provide constant current at all.
Thank you. I enjoyed this. I do not see why resistors would produce a "constant current" however. Actually, it would be constantly changing.
Charging alkaline at 50% duty cycle is better - slightly less chance of leaking.
I'm going to pretend that is a positive. Before someone mentions the charging current/voltage :)
I had same looking charger since 2002 to 2004 as kid. I love it because it was my first charger and I buy it for my money. I use it for charging 800mAh nicd AA batteries for my flashlight, radio or toys. I also collect old phone battery thrown away in front of phone bazaar shop in the box disassemble and use good cell from it.
of course german engineer would hate it because its not overengineered
How to blow up batteries
need a good fast manual charger
I have a cordless black&decker dust buster
Inside there are two nicad cells in series and a single diode.
The plug is a 3v transformer
Simple as
I've literally had about 8 of these...
I still have one exactly the same as this, here in the UK. My parents were going to
throw it out but I thought maybe it might come in useful. I prefer this type of
charger because it has a flex and can be easily plugged into any outlet unlike
the adapter type ones. I can't remember what make mine is though. It is
actually rather old, I think they stopped making these quite some time ago.
These chargers work okay with NiCd batteries, but those are not made anymore because of the toxicity of cadmium. The modern NiMH batteries are a lot more sensitive to overcharging, so you would not want to charge them in such a simple charger that can't detect when a battery is full.
I might one day decide to cut the flex off and put it with the next lot of stuff to take to the dump
if I need that extra space. I didn't know this was Ni-Cd only and I was even more surprised the
LED's do not indicate that the battery is full. We have used it to test alkaline batteries in the past.
Wow me too! The same one with the dot matrix text... Crappy little bulb to test it haha. Dad bought it me for my remote control car.
Today I was about to cut the flex off mine and put it with all the other electrical waste to be taken down to the tip but my Dad decided to take it back and either give it to a clearance or charity shop. My Dad obviously doesn't know Ni-Cd batteries are no longer made. But it doesn't work with MiMh battereis, apparently
there is a difference.
i am kissing my intelicharger from nicore right now lol
I've got that exact model, lol
Looks like bulb is a 222 style was ubiquitous used pre white LED's, surprised it's still being used. It's possibly used as load to test 1.2V NICADS.
That's what I tried to explain in the video - the light was indeed used for testing the batteries...
@@DrCassette but only the first battery compartment from right side can be utilized as a test port
I found one today brand new in the box in a thrift store. I did some math and it only takes 10 to 20 recharges to earn back the cost of a rechargeable battery now so it isnt THAT bad if a battery dies soon
It still is wasteful to kill a rechargeable battery with a bad charger...
Merhaba açıklama bölümünü türkçe olarak çevirebilir misin rica etsem bende de aynı cihaz vardı tadilatını yaptım ama nasıl şarj yapıp yapmadığını tam olarak anlayamadım ilgilenir misiniz teşekkürler
Bende alacağım bundan hangi pilleri şarj ediyor.
nicd batterys
Ni-cd needs pulsating charging. Full rectification will make them hot due to native low internal resistance. Bedini radiant charger is best.
Interesting, I didn't know that...
that's, when price factor dominates during development, ehh
when the customer has no choice because there is only one model on the shelf of the retailer and no bad amazon reviews due to the non-existance of amazon...
@@rarbiart Or any other online reviews... Amazon is not the only option ;)
@@DrCassette if you smell "fake amazon review": just skip that one. if you retailer person is telling you "best product, i am using at home with great success": difficult...
this will be bad... (i had to use it somewhere often where it was not able to get it thrown and replaced... it was a battery killer)
So I was right in assuming that the half wave rectification is a bad thing? Or was it a battery killer because the charge time is almost uncontrollable?
@@DrCassette either overcharging (stayed warm while beeing in the charger, i assume that the overcharge was converted to heat) plus no mitigation of memory effect whatsoever.
Ah yes, I always discharge batteries on my good charger before charging them...
@@DrCassette hmm, that defeats the purpose of keeping a bad charger if you already have them in a good charger before.
I had mine running off a timer, they they are not sitting there for 24 hours getting cooked
Looks dangerous .
Dangerous for the batteries, electrically this charger is safe.