[Milsurplus] question about charging a PRC-68A battery

[J. Forster]

There is a pretty good article on NiCds here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel-cadmium_battery

Not everything, but a good start on the basics.

-John

====================


> Eugene,
>
> If you use a standard bench supply (which should work just fine) there's
> one thing you need to look out for.  Back in the olden days early on in my
> last Day Job (30+ years ago) we used HP bench supplies to re-charge the
> silver-zinc packs that we used in our pipeline inspection pigs.  We
> learned the
> hard way that if a supply was charging a pack and you absent mindedly
> turned of
> the supply without disconnecting it first (or if the lights just blinked
> or
> if you tripped over the line cord and unplugged it), it would eat the pass
> elements faster than you could say Oh S...!.  The HP supplies in those
> days
> had no back current protection on the outputs.  So if you use this method,
> either make sure that yours does have protection or add a diode between
> one
> output and the battery pack.  And if you are using the constant voltage
> chart
> or charging to a specified end-point voltage, make your voltage
> measurements across the battery or add about 0.6 volts to the supply's
> output voltmeter
> reading.
>
> In a message dated 4/28/2010 8:02:52 PM Central Daylight Time, al at ar88.net
> writes:
>> Eugene,
>>
>> The safe way would be to use a 20-30 volt power supply with a series
>> resistor to limit the current to 80 mA into the battery.  This is the
>> standard "trickle charge" of C/10 where C is the battery ampere-hour
>> capacity, in this case 800 mA.  16 hours will insure full charge, and if
>> it sits on charge for a couple of days no harm will be done.
>>
>> If you have a bench supply with variable current limit, you can use that
>> directly without the resistor.
>>
>> Al
>>
>> On 4/28/2010 8:33 PM, W2HX wrote:
>> >Hi there.  I have a PRC-68A which works FB with Brooke's AA battery
>> adapter.
>> >I also acquired one of those NiCd rechargeable batteries for this
>> radio.
>> It
>> >says the following on it:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >15 VOLTS 0.80AH AT 0.16A
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >I do not have a proper charger, per se, but can anyone tell me how I
>> might
>> >charge this battery with a DC power supply and an ammeter? What would
>> the
>> >correct set up lok like? Would I set the volts to whatever necessary to
>> get
>> >0.16A or something? Or set the voltage at something set?  The battery
>> >currently has 5Vdc worth of charge and the battery is NOS, never used.
>> >
>>
>
> Robert & Susan Downs - Houston
> wa5cab dot com (Web Store)
> MVPA 9480
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