Battery Pre-Cautions

[Gizmo]

Batteries require precautions when used including 14500, 16340, 18500, 18650, whatever size Li-ion cell you use, know when to hold them, know when to fold and toss them out. The protection devices used in these include a thermal fuse inside the positive end that will disconnect the cell if it goes over a safe temperature, a small pressure relief valve if the cell starts building up internal pressure, and a circuit board at the negative end to prevent over charging, over discharging, and overcurrent.

Sounds safe? Well let me scare you just a little.

Thermal fuse will open if the battery get almost hot enough to explode. Tolerance on this temperature is not that good, hope it works if needed.

Pressure vents will vent just a little bit of the flammable gases but if the cell has gone into thermal runaway, not fast enough to prevent the cell from blowing the whole front cap off and burning up. And don't forget it is flammable gas coming out of the cell. Oh, and some Lithium.

The circuit board is made with magic blocks. Bad Mojo can kill these little magic blocks and the protection circuit not be protecting anymore. Maybe turns off, maybe turns on.

In summary, do not overcharge your batteries, do not over vape constantly and keep your temperature of your battery down. The evic has a cut off built in but not all variable voltage enclosures do. So be careful out there and happy vaping

 

[Riaz]

is it safe to say that the egot batteries are safe as well, having that automatic 15sec cut off ?

 

[CraftyZA]

That is why I'm slowly starting to replace all 16 of my 18650 batteries. I'm replacing with AW IMR batteries. They are not li-ion. THey use "safer chemistry".

 

[Gizmo]

Where do you get those batteries from?

 

[Derick]

AW is a guy called Andrew that repackages Panasonic and Sanyo batteries (and probably others too). He sells these batteries on the candlepower forums.

You don't really have to buy AW IMR's, but in General any IMR battery uses slightly different mixture of chemicals than your standard Li-ion Battery. These chemicals make the battery more stable and less likely go into thermal runway and catastrophic venting (exploding).

The downside to this chemistry is that it can not store a very large charge (current maximum is around 2200mAh)

Luckily for us 2200mAh is plenty for our purposes.

AW has earned a good reputation because he only uses the best brands for his range and because he has good customer service, but in general any good brand name IMR battery will do the trick

Technically IMR batteries are still Li-ion, but just one of the many types of Li-ion batteries out there
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/types_of_lithium_ion

As to which one IMR is take a look here
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?325456-What-exactly-does-quot-IMR-quot-mean

So, get yourself a good IMR brand (AW or otherwise) with a high discharge rate to suit your particular device and coil (especially Mechanical mods) If you want to know which ones are good - scour the candlepower forums, they have been in the battery game a lot longer than any vaper and we can certainly use their knowledge and experience

But if you are going to get an IMR 10A for your SVD then it is overkill, as the SVD will never use that 10A and you could have just stuck to a decent brand name standard Li-ion battery at probably half the price and twice the life.
(The SVD's electronics limit output to 5A - as do most electronic mods - except perhaps for the Provari)

 

[CraftyZA]

The AW IMR or MNKE batteries willl be used on my K100.(and the kts I will get from you once finance allow...) I do not plan to go sub-ohm, but 1.0 ohm perhaps. 1 ohm on a fresh battery is about 4.5 amps. (give or take a bit. Calculator is missing) Then consider that resistance can change as the coil sets in, it will allow for a bit of fluctuation.
Before I knew the dangers of li-ion I was running 0.6 ohm rebuilt kanger coil on my k100 empire, with an unprotected 18350 battery. I must admit, it was a VERY pleasant vape. lucky my face is still attached

 

[Derick]

Heh, yeah I remember that - generally though the batteries don't really explode as such - they 'vent' - think of when you light a box of matches all at once - kinda like that, but it burns for a lot longer - the danger of exploding comes in when you have it inside a nice solid metal tube... and the pressure builds up. Although most mods these days come with venting holes, those holes are meant for the general venting of gasses while the battery is in normal use and I'm not sure they are big enough for a battery in thermal runaway. (not like I'm going to test it anytime soon either )

Just to be on the safe side, it is probably better using a kick of some sort in your mechanical mods - just a bit of extra protection and something that will cut out your battery for in case you measured something wrong somewhere or you have a short - it will even protect the battery from over-discharging and some of them are even advanced enough to vary voltage on your batteries

 

[CraftyZA]

Haha, yes I remember Melinda spoke to you then replayed back to me. I have not used those batteries since. Also rebuilt that coil to 1.8 ohm.
How many amps can this kick handle?
I have an ithaka build I want to try when my ready wires arrive one day. (I accidently selected sea freight from Miami.)It is called the highlander build. Unfortunately the build is by Bishop. Thus it will come in at about half an ohm. It is rumoured that with this build you get all the vapour of sub ohm, but the flavour of a civilized build.
I would like to at least try this once. But only if i know it is going to be safe. I'm rather font of my face attached to my body.
I completely agree with the vent holes that are to small. Even on high end units like the GG stealth, and Just GG. The holes are normally 1mm or less. Now with the speed of expanding gasses, it will find a weak spot, and most likely blow some fragments of the mod in all directions if the vent holes cannot relieve the pressure fast enough.
a pipe bomb essentially.

 

[CraftyZA]

Correction...
the highlander comes as quad coil at 0.2 ohm. That is out of my legue!!! Not gonna happen!

 

[Derick]

There are different types of kicks out there, made by different companies, each with their own limits - the one we are getting for now is made by Kamry - designed for the k100/1 and the KTS. They don't specify on their product page what the amp limit is and googling does not bring me any results...guess we will ask them tomorrow

 

[Derick]

Ok, after some more googling it seems the default amp limit for kicks is 5 Amps

 

[Gizmo]

Wow that video, I want that kind of vape production... DAMN! Is that just from the low ohms? Or his wick stacking?

 

[ET]

another tip i read is that lithium ion bats are not like most rechargeables that we are used to in that supposedly you do not need to run the battery into the ground before you swop it out or charge it again. from what was said it seems better to not run the battery dead but rather when it starts getting weaker swop it out for another charged one

 

[Derick]

Yeah Li-ion does not form a 'memory' effect like the old Ni-Cd batteries, in fact they live longer if you don't charge them fully too.

Check out the battery university if you have some time - really excellent info there

 

[CraftyZA]

Wow that video, I want that kind of vape production... DAMN! Is that just from the low ohms? Or his wick stacking?

Well both I guess. Remember, when you add resistors in parallel, you drop the overall resistance.
It goes something like 1/Rtotal = 1/R1 + 1/R2 etc....
Now you have a larger area that gets heated up by having 4 coils, and also the low r cause the coils to be much hotter. Wicking needs to be blitzing fast for this, seeing as it will burn juice at a VERY rapid rate. I can imagine a dry hit with this setup to be very unpleasant.

 

[CraftyZA]

Back to battery discussion...
In the video above, he vapes at 70 watts! This is putting 17amps load on the battery, and quite frankly, it is reckless!
p = (v x v)/r
p= (4.2 x 4.2) / 0.25 = 70.56!

To see the amps,
I = V/R
I = 4.2 / 0.25 = 16.8 Amps!!

So this illustrates, that even when you buy a strong battery like one of those AW, or other high drain battery with a 10A rating, you will still put too much load on the battery, and risk it venting or exploding.

Please do not try this.

Using the calculations above, make sure that any build you try is well below the battery safety rating.

 

[ET]

well it is called the highlander. if you mess around with it there goes your head

 

[Tw!st3dVaP0r]

awsum site to assist you in choosing batteries
http://lygte-info.dk/review/batteries2012/Common18650comparator.php