AA battery hack secret

According to Ed Huntress :

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Well ... the video won't play on my system, so I can't see what it looks like, however:

32 cells connected in series would be around 48 Volts (assuming 1.5 V/cell). For six volts, you would only need four cells in series, which suggests eight series sets connected in parallel.

Now -- I have opened up 6V lantern batteries in the past to get size F cells for some really old equipment. In some, the cells were strapped together, but in others, the cells were connected by strips of metal mounted in cardboard, with connections made purely by the pressure of the assembly. If the current ones are made like that, then the cells would just fall out.

That one would fall into four individual cells. Unless they have stopped making the type-F cells for other purposes, I don't see any reason to make it up with a series-parallel array of AA cells. But it has been at least fifteen years since I last disassembled a 6V lantern battery.

Enjoy, DoN.

back.http://www.break.com/index/how-to-save-money-on-batteries.html>

Can't say there will be no gain, as someone will end up wiser, and will no longer beleive everything they read on the internet.

What price an education? :-)

Cheers Trevor Jones

On 23 Sep 2007 21:01:25 GMT, with neither quill nor qualm, snipped-for-privacy@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) quickly quoth:

I just picked a couple more 15-packs for $5ea. (-$3ea mail-in rebate), but I usually buy the Eveready Gold 24-packs for $6.65 on sale at Bi-Mart. Alkalines are the way to go.

A series, parallel connected cells would prematurely discharge into one another untill they all went dead. It is never a good idea to leave cells connected in parallel for any extended length of time without being used.

John

back.http://www.break.com/index/how-to-save-money-on-batteries.html>

What I have seen done with some battery manufacturers is to make up a C cell with a smaller AA cell inside the C cell enclosure. I think it was when the recharageables first came out. You thought you were buying a full C cell until you opened it up.

John

"And what is inside your drum, little boy, that makes all that noies?" :)

John

i happened to have a dead lantern battery on hand. cracked it open, like the british guy said, "BOOSHIT". lol. this whole thread has been fun. i didn't know what was in a lantern battery and the original video had me like "wow! cool!" funny. the guy got me. thanks anyhow dixon.

b.w.

i can't say that's what's in ALL lantern batteries, just what was in the one i had.)

Different makes and models have different internal construction. I have taken apart more than a few batteries. Some 9-volts had the 6 AAA (or smaller?) sized batteries, some were a stack of 6 rectangles. After all, think about the voltage and proportions of a 9-volt.

Not unreasonable to assume that maybe, just maybe, the video applies to some but not all varieties of the same externally similar type of battery.

Some 9-volt batteries consist of 6 AAAA (yes, quadruple A,

cells inside.

I know this because when laser pointers were new and cool in the early

1990s I had a very thin pen-styled one that took AAAA's, which were very hard to find, and had to resort to dismantling 9-volt batteries to get them. They used spot-welded tabs to connect, but so small that you could pull them off.

Sometimes I would open a 9-volt battery and find that it was a stack of 6 little sardine-can-shaped cells instead of AAAA cylinders. I forget nbow which brands were one type versus the other.

I still have that laser pointer. Even though they're cheap nowadays I've never seen one that thin.

Perhaps not now -- but I have a Geiger counter (Navy surplus) which requires:

1 15V cell (for bias)

1 135 V cell (I made an adaptor for two 67-1/2 V cells, which are now quite expensive and difficult to find on their own).

2) F cells in series for the filaments for the tubes.

I suspect that portable radios in the past (tube days) used F cells more commonly than today, which is why the 6V lantern battery was designed to be just the right size to hold four F cells.

Anyway -- I've used 6V lantern batteries as sources for the size 'F' cells for this in the past, and I hope that most vendors still make the lantern battery from 'F' cells.

I wish that I could *see* the video. Even with flash installed and turned on, I can't see it on a browser running in my unix system, which makes me think that it is yet another web site tailored to depend on the unique bugs found in Internet Explorer, and it just won't run on anything other than a Windows system. (Just like the system run for patients to check up on their status with my doctor's group -- it won't work fully on anything other than a Windows system.

Can anyone tell me what brand of battery is being disassembled in the video?

Thanks, DoN.

According to William Wixon :

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O.K. *That* is four size F cells, which is what I have always expected to be in there -- but I still could accept that some maker might use a series/parallel array of 32 AA cells for some reason or other -- perhaps they are not set up to make size F cells and their competitors still are. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Guess you don't have a 8,9,12,14,18,24volt electric drill ? Those are button cells. More buttons the better. Many series to make voltage. Many of those in parallel to make current. Loose a cell and a branch is gone. That is a drop in current.

Reliability went up when the buttons were used from larger high current cells.

Who knows what the date code on the two batteries. One could be years old and the other not. The brand ? model ? the same ?????

Hum. Mart>

According to john :

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Certainly a problem -- though less so with an identical batch of unused cells right from the factory. And assembled into the lantern battery housing, they should be pretty much all at the same temperature, which would minimize the problem as well.

Now -- if you added a diode in series with each series string before paralleling them, you should be fine -- but how much would the eight diodes add to the cost of the battery? :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

One contiunous battery would be 48 volts. It is possible that SOME lantern batteries may be made that way, and that the top and bottom holders may have the required circuitry, only requiring roughly half to be installed "backwards" from the rest. You would have 4 sets of 8 cells each in parrallel, connected in series. Roughly 7 amp hour capacity.

Agreed, in theory. However, in practice, it IS done with reasonable results using matched cells from the same batch. Particularly common with lithium cells in computer batteries, and with NimH cells in tool batteries (which DO have a rather poor reliability record)

The "F" designation was for "F"ilament use. Lots of old batteries had

1.5 volt filaments in the rectifier tubes, so you had an "A", a "B" and an "F" battery.

Not to mention the voltage drop of four diodes in series -- something like

2.8 V? Add more cells... d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

Metal, or plastic wheel?

I opened a damaged Energiser 6 V lantern battery a few months ago, and it had four large cells in it.