Anybody had Inon battery issues?

My girlfriend Alex's Inon D2000 is very fussy about batteries. It seems fine with Energizer Alkalines, but when I put in my 2700mAh NiMHs, most of the time it doesn't power up. I'm still trying to work out whether its a battery dimension issue or the NiMH voltage.

Has anyone else had any trouble like this? Inon says NiMH is fine for the D2000 so I'm a little puzzled. I do wonder if the plastic "blobs" either side of one of the contacts is preventing some batteries from making proper contact.

Martyn

On one of my trips I fixed an Inon ring flash that the owner had completely give up on. To make that work I had to hold the removable battery contacts at an angle to get a reliable connection. I did this using the ring pull of a can of beer (OK, it was probably a can of 7UP, it is just beer sounds cooler). Once fixed it worked reliably for the rest of the trip.

Alex

I agree with Alex, it's probably a contact issue. I've been using a pair of D2000W with NiMH batteries (GP and Energizer) for several months without problems.

I can't speak for the D2000, but have been using the Z240 with Powerex 2700mah batteries without a problem.

Hi all,

I have been having this problem with my Inon quad flash for quite some time (it is pretty old now) but only with rechargeable batteries – if I put alkalines in it charges up immediately. It is an oxide problem. I find that if I use a ‘wet wipe’ or similar to wipe the battery terminals and the flash terminals first then it generally fires up first time. Sometimes I need to use an eraser on a pencil (a rubber in the UK) to clean the terminal as well.

Quite by chance I ran into the Inon rep in Ocean Optics in London this month and explained this problem – he put it to his technical department who have responded to say that the oxide resistant coating that they put on the contacts during manufacture will break down eventually and is only an issue with rechargeable batteries. They will replace the battery terminals, but right now I am reluctant to send my quad away for several weeks to Japan, so I will live with it. I have a friend with a quad who has the very same problem with Ni Cads/NiMH.

Hope that helps.

Mark Webster

www.photec.co.uk

Thanks for the input people. I found the problem last night and it's infuriating!

In the battery compartment on the Inons the the two cells nearest the main body make contect with hex shaped solid metal contacts in the bottom of the compartment. There are channels formed into the wall of the compartment on this side to accept the rounded sides of the cells. These channels do not go all the way down into the compartment, and end in a slight ledge, about 1mm wide. Regular alkalines have a -ve terminal that protrudes enough to go past the ledge and hit the contact. My NiMH cells do not, their -ve terminals are much flatter, barely protuding past the plastic label/cover.

I found that if I teased the pastic out of the way on one of my NiMHs and lined that side of the cell up against the ledge, it would make contact once the compartment lid was fully clamped down. Tap the strobe housing and it would lose contact momentarily.

If the ledge were ground down ever so slightly It would fix the issue. I'll bring it up with the Ocean Optics guys this weekend at Visions. If they can't sort it, I at least have a plan for making a tool to fix it myself. I'd say about 0.1mm would do it.

Martyn

I had a the same problem with my quad flash - it was really infuriating ( that word again ) to find that my nice new 2700MAH Nimh batteries were not compatible.

That said it worked flawlessly once I went back to my old batteries ( 2500 MAH Sanyo NimH ) and is without doubt the single best addition to my still's kit in recent times.

Well, here's my idea. If I get a piece of metal pipe, preferably steel that is about the same outside diameter as an AA cell and roughen up the end, I should be able to remove the tiny amount of plastic required to fix the problem. It really is a sliver that needs to go.

Martyn

I have the same problem with my Nikonos 105 and NiMH batteries. The ones I use are a fraction of a mm shorter than regular alkalines. The battery contacts just don't work correctly. I cut a folded sheet of paper and dumped it on top of the plastic contact piece, with the lid tightened down that's enough to make the NiMh batteries work. I've also used a thin piece of aluminium foil in the past on a Nikon Sb-24 that didn't seem to like the fit of my NiMH batteries. Maybe you can put a piece of foil at the base of the battery cells to make the contact shallower.

Rinjani

Rinjani, yeah I thought about dropping in a shim but you then have to check everytime you put batteries in that it hasn't strayed and started to short out the whole set

What I have done though is slightly grind down the ledge in the bottom of the battery compartment so that the NiMH can more easily slip past it. It turned out that it wasn't about alkaline -ve contacts sticking out further, rather that NiMHs are slightly thicker in diameter. Alkalines easily fall past the ledge, being thinner and generally more rounded at the edge of the base.

The image shows cutaway sections of the offending ledge. The NiMH gets stuck, being both fat and square edged. I've ground away a bit of the ledge so that the NiMH can getdown to make contact.

I will bring this up with Ocean Optics (main UK Inon dealer), so that they are aware of the cause of the issue. I really doubt we're the only users who've come across this problem.

Martyn

My experiences with Inon Z-240s isn't quite the same as your experience but, upon placing fresh -- disposeable -- batteries in both strobes, I have always had one of the pair drain its power supply well before the other. Same battery batch, same power settings, everything. I have wholly gave up on rechargeables . . .

My girlfriend Alex's Inon D2000 is very fussy about batteries. It seems fine with Energizer Alkalines, but when I put in my 2700mAh NiMHs, most of the time it doesn't power up. I'm still trying to work out whether its a battery dimension issue or the NiMH voltage.

 

Has anyone else had any trouble like this? Inon says NiMH is fine for the D2000 so I'm a little puzzled. I do wonder if the plastic "blobs" either side of one of the contacts is preventing some batteries from making proper contact.

 

Martyn

Thanks Martyn! I've had this problem with my Inon 220s and NiMh batteries. Its been driving my crazy. Thanks for identifying a fix.

Strange. I have both Z220 and Z240 and a wide variety of NiMh batteries and have never had this problem. It probably depends on the exact manufacturer of the NiMh cells.

It does seem to be it Steve. It's only a problem with wide, square arsed AA batteries. I think Tim and I have been unlucky with our particular NiMHs.

The "tool" I used was a piece of steel tube, 0.5" O.D.

I prepped up the edge of it, so that I could use it carefully and slowly to wear the edge into the shape I've tried to show in the diagram. I actually made one end of the tube abrasive on the very end. The other end I made quite smooth but with the side of the tube being abrasive. I used a metal file to do this.

After a few srokes with the tool I blew out any plastic swarf with a "can of air" blower. Just tiny bits at a time.

The channels are milled into the battery compartment, so it possible that some units are milled ever so slightly deeper and never have this problem at all. It's this notion of incomplete milling that I hope to bring up the the Inon dealer, hopefully Inon Japan can avoid the problem in the future.

Martyn