David,
You did what I have heard of and discharge rate curve is all
overblown unless it's was shorted internally by those whiskers.
The normal self-discharge curve is 'bout few percent per week. Bad
ones dies less than 2 to 3 days due to whiskers. Those caps from
disposable cams is wimpy, works well most of time on AA and AAA,
small ones. This type of cells I deal with are large than and heavy
duty than skimpy consumer cells stuff. The good job is done with
pepsi can sized capacitor or heavy current 5v power supply that will
not wimp out at hint of shorts. :) I heard of this trick for
blowing out hard to find shorts on circuit boards especially bypass
caps using right power supply that will kick out gobs of currents at
5v, POW pop pop pop! Several bad caps blew up like dynamites and
easily replaced and the board was returned to service.
Really, this is short term solution unless you keep those cells
charged all the time, never allowing them to discharge at all.
Jason D.
FYI: ni-cads self discharge so fast that you can
almost watch the curve
on an O-scope! I use a strobe from a throw-away camera to blast the
whiskers off my reluctant ni-cads. I've done this for years and it works
most of the time.
Try it! DavidQ.
On Wed, 30 Jul 1997 15:55:53 -0700 Marvin <marvin(a)rain.org> writes:
jpero(a)mail.cgo.wave.ca wrote: