Charging new Ikelite DS-125 batteries

I have a new battery for an Ikelite DS-125. Is there a particular way I should charge it the first time(s)?

cheers

Lndr

Make sure you charge the battery fully, and discharge it fully 3 or 4 times to optimise the performance.

Actually, even after these first few times, it's best to make sure the battery is discharged before recharging it. This will extend its life.

While that was common practice years ago, it does not seem to be the case across the board anymore. You should not fully discharge the batteries of Ikelite strobes. The manual, and Ike, have stated that is bad for the batteries.

NEVER completely discharge any ni-cad pack of batteries for fear of reversing polarity of one or more of the cells. The advent of the "smart chargers" makes everything automatic and wonderful in the words of the glib tongued old man.

so Ike ... does that mean when I'm in the 129th minute of my dive and my light starts to fade I should turn it off and swim home in the dark for fear of running it completely flat? ... or does it hold enough charge to prevent disaster even when the light goes out?

cheers

Lndr

Smart as Ike and his fellow-workers are, I doubt if he developes the rules on such a thing as chargeable batteries.

The drainage myth is due to the memory effect that (older) NiCad batteries had. Espcially if you take two roles of strobelit pictures and then charge (and that every time) the NiCad cells will loose capacity due to some internal cristallisation process. So you should use the capacity of a battery before you charge it. This only happens if you stop everytime at the same spot, so the lesson in general is only that you have to use the capacity. (there is a trick that i shouldnt recomment in a US based forum, wopping the 1,2 V battery with a car battery can burn away the memory effect)

The newer NiMH batteries dont have this problem, but will self-drain more.

Draining a battery artifically will result in draining it far below its normal level. This is bad for any type of battery and can result in all kinds of problems. For lights I prefer the good old big lead cells in my home made dir style halogene light.

So if you need the light to finish the dive, thats OK, but dont push it until it does nothing anymore. If any batterie is drained low, you should recharge it as soon as possible.

Gerard

Use it, enjoy it, don't worry about it. Take pictures and use the light all the way back to the boat. I've had mine for years and hundreds of dives and run them down plenty. My oldest pack finally got noticably weak, and Ike put new batteries in for, can't remember, maybe $40. That works out to about a penny a dive. Why give up the last couple minutes of a dive to save a penny?

With a good charger 99% of your battery charge problems go away.

What he said,. shoot and enjoy them.

so Ike ... does that mean when I'm in the 129th minute of my dive and my light starts to fade tongue.gif I should turn it off and swim home in the dark for fear of running it completely flat? ... or does it hold enough charge to prevent disaster even when the light goes out?

I think it means you should turn your backup light on and turn off the strobe.

Even with two strobes, I carry a small backup light as odds are good that both strobes will run low around the same time.