15 Aug
2006
15 Aug
'06
5:27 p.m.
Quoth Tony Duell on my recent battery failure (and for those who have
asked, they were typical off-the-shelf Eveready AAs):
Actually, I thought the electrolyte was alkaline....
Ah, okay.
> > shell in a way I literally didn't think
was possible. Defective battery?
> > Some other problem? We may never know.
>
> What brand of battery? I haven't seen a battery fail like this
> in decades. Was the light stored in a harsh environment?
Not at all. They've been in and out of my toolkit in the same manner for
many years. (I treat them kindly. They're tools, so deserve good treatment
for that alone; and if they fail, it's _ugly_ being stuck in the dark
when scenery is coming at you very fast. <g>)
With some (most?) alkaline primary cells (the
'Duracell' type of thing),
the outer casing of the cell is the +ve connection. There's an insulating
sleeve around it, of course. And the outer casing of a Maglite is
connected to the -ve side of the battery via the spring at the bottom end.
So if the insualting sleeve on a cell fails, then that cell, or the whole
battery, is shorted out. That will cause it to discharge darn fast, and
probably leak.
Ahhh, that's likely what happened then. _Why_ it happened - how the
insulating sleeve came to be damaged to begin with - may well remain a
mystery, but a sleeve failure leading to a short->leakage->alkaline
corrosion->mangling the interior of the Maglite certainly matches the
damage I found.
...Anyway, rare an event as it may be, it would give me serious pause
about using anything battery-backed in a classic mini. They're a _lot_
harder to come by than Maglites. :) :)
-O.-