Amazing D cell discovery!

[oldmoley1]

About six years ago I acquired some Ray-o-Vac batteries via an advert on our local Freecycle site. On arrival at the owner's house, I was confronted by three pallets of the damned things, rather than the few packs I was expecting. Having agreed to the terms of the offer, I had to take the lot. They were just out of date when I got them, but are still as fresh as the day they were packed. They have actually come in very useful, not least to power my 704 and 286 linesman's phones. Down to the last 2000 PP3s and 3 1/2 thousand or so D cells now though........

[turretslug]

That reminded me of this;

http://www.cnet.com/forums/discussio...teries-324178/

[G6Tanuki]

Interestingly, Ray-O-Vac now also own Varta's primary-battery business.

[julie_m]

Originally Posted by oldmoley1

About six years ago I acquired some Ray-o-Vac batteries ..... three pallets ..... Down to the last 2000 PP3s and 3 1/2 thousand or so D cells now though........

How's this for an idea? Package up a couple of hundred D cells, in series, and wired via a 5 amp fuse to a kettle-type power lead. These can be sold to gullible punters to power their PCs (a switched-mode power supply will work just fine from 300 V DC). After all, anyone who believes that water from a plastic bottle is better, cleaner, purer and healthier than the stuff that comes out of the tap can be persuaded that electricity from a disposable battery is better, cleaner and purer and less harmful to the health of their electronic equipment than the stuff that comes out of the wall .....

[TonyDuell]

Many a true word is spoken in jest

Some years ago when I was designing an amplifer for very small signals and was having problems with noise (what a surprise) I (temporarily) powered the first op-amp stage off a couple of those 12V 'car fob' batteries just to elimate the power supply as a noise source (that was not the problem but I did want to make sure).

[Andrew B]

Sell them to audiophools as noiseless power supplies?

[paulsherwin]

Actually, if you are building your own op-amp RIAA preamp it makes perfect sense to run it from a couple of PP3s. They will last for years if you remember to switch off when not in use, and it saves the cost, effort and space of building a high quality power supply.

[threeseven]

There was a trend to run Hi-Fi pre-amps on batteries in the 70's - early 80's, even some of the big name brands had them.

[threeseven]

Found some Procells today in an insulation tester that I don't use very often. Eight AA's, use by date 2003, almost as new terminal voltage and no leaks! So it does seem that the old ones are much better than those being sold now.

[Nickthedentist]

I'm definitely not buying any more Duracell/Procell stuff when my current stock is exhausted.

I'd say about 50% of them leak, often before they're exhausted or past their use-by date.

The most ridiculous incident was in a (secondhand) remote-controlled car I got my son for his birthday. It was dirt cheap from a charity shop, so it didn't really matter financially, but it was very disappointing to find that was virtually a write-off less than a month after the first set of batteries were installed because they had leaked so badly.

GP (Golf Peak) ones seem very good and are often used by OEMs, but who knows these days.

N.

[turretslug]

I gather that the gold-top submarine eventually went MIA- I would have hoped that something with 5,000 D-cells would have had plenty of parallel redundancy as a given, but I did wonder if it was a casualty of Duracell's slipping reliability.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...lifesupplement

[threeseven]

Originally Posted by Nickthedentist

I'm definitely not buying any more Duracell/Procell stuff when my current stock is exhausted.

Copy that. I'll be going Panasonic and give Maplins a try.

[emeritus]

I note that a comment in the link given in post #42 by someone who was involved in the submarine project, mentions that they had had problems with "a certain popular make", but does not say which one.

We're careful about which batteries we buy
by jamesperrett / March 18, 2009 3:09 AM PDT
In reply to: And, when your flashlight doesn't light
I work on the Autosub project.

We make sure that we buy batteries that don't need to be whacked to make them work! We were actually bitten by this problem a few years ago and since then have steered well clear of a certain popular make of manganese alkaline cells.

We also have a novel packaging design for lithium polymer cells which we use in our deep diving Autosub6000 vehicle.

[arjoll]

Originally Posted by Billy T

Regional favouritism! I've never seen a Black & Silver DSE AA or AAA .

The attached are the ones I'm thinking of, this pack was from Riccarton earlier this year, the last ones I had were from Invercargill. I guess they're more silver and white with black writing! I haven't opened them yet, as I'm still working though a pack of Energizers that came free from element14.

Mine don't just get used for remotes, but also for an old 37 MHz wireless mouse which chews through them, and the kids use them for Xbox contollers which also get a hammering, and various other devices. Now that Matthew is at UC and Sarah is due to go to Victoria next year I think my battery usage will drop back considerably!

[Mooly]

My AVO 8 still has a Rayovac alkaline D cell fitted. It must be around 25yrs old now but still packs a punch and is leak free.

A Philips remote for a 15" FST 'Trendset' still operates OK on its original Maxell AAA batteries which are dated September 1986.

Energisers have been the worst for me with regard to leakage.

[turretslug]

Originally Posted by emeritus

I note that a comment in the link given in post #42 by someone who was involved in the submarine project, mentions that they had had problems with "a certain popular make", but does not say which one.

To be honest, I hadn't actually read that far into the article, but it doesn't come as too much surprise. I'd first heard of this drone in an article way back in New Scientist where the apparently most cost-effective use of 5,000-odd D cells was commented on. My instinct was, I hope they give each contact face a good clean on fitting- experience with multi-D cell packs in Nagra IV portable recorders and the like had shown that a quick, firm scrape of each end of a cell across denim was wise before fitting in order to remove any film present. Nagra were prudent in that one of the contact pips in each battery-holder row is actually a protruding end of a 20mm fuse (ceramic for compression strength- cell dimensions vary fractionally and a firm push is sometimes necessary) in sprung holder, demonstrating acknowledgement that a pack of alkaline Ds is potentially quite hazardous. One thing I pretty much instinctively do with any battery appliance that plays up is to whip the cells out, give the ends a denim scrape and try again before actually condemning and replacing them. A denim scrape also frequently works with fibre-optic ends, but it's very unofficial....

[John_BS]

Nick:

I used to use GP batteries from CPC, but have now discovered that they tend to leak with time, so I've switched to Philips and Eveready etc.

John

[paulsherwin]

I've had leaky Philips batteries.

We've had discussions about this before, and the consensus seems to be that all batteries can and do leak under certain circumstances. It's practically impossible to find a brand that never leaks, partly because even major brands subcontract manufacture to OEMs located all over the place.

The point made in this thread is that Duracell, once a byword for high quality long lasting batteries which rarely leaked, now make batteries which are leakier than average despite charging high prices.

[Techman]

It's all interesting stuff!

I think we can safely say that Procell are now to be avoided and that Ray-O-Vac were definitely the best in their day. I found some old AAA versions of these that I remember removing from an old phone base where they'd been used as backup batteries. They were dated January 2002 and were down to about 2.25 volts but no sign of leakage. However, I found a couple of others of the same date that were as good as dead and one was leaking. They must have been part used ones that I'd removed from old equipment years ago and forgotten about.

I found some old Procell 'D' cells in a box dated 1997 and 2000 and although a little down on terminal voltage, none of them were leaking.

The TV I mentioned before certainly is a heavy old thing with all those 'D' cells. I probably ought not to leave them in as although they're not leaking yet, they could well do sometime in the near future. The one I showed separately in the previous posts picture measured 1.43 volts, but that's not bad after possibly 20 odd years - not to mention the current that they're all still able to supply. I decided to show a better demonstration of this by feeding the set with a signal from a video recorder:-

[threeseven]

Is leakage more likely if the cell is discharged?