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Batteries for Mechs

ScReWbALL

Silver Contributor
Member For 4 Years
I haven’t been vaping as much lately, so, I haven’t been around and lost some of the pulse of the vaping community but I dropped by a new’ish shop in town and they basically ran for cover when they heard me say that I use Sony VTC5a’s in my Mechs.
These have always been great batteries for me, but has something happened where these batteries are no longer good and safe batteries?
They were telling me that what they sold (imagine that) were the only ones I should be using and and those were Samsung (I’m not sure of the model number, but it wasn’t Samsung25R’s, which I’ll use in a pinch).
Just curious if I need to stop using these Sony’s en lieu of a safer and more productive battery that I haven’t picked up on my radar. Any info is much appreciated.


You’re not drinking water are you? You realize that’s an ingredient in antifreeze!
 
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~Don~

Platinum Contributor
Member For 5 Years
A few years ago all I used were 5As in mechs.

Beyond their rating from Mooch to boot.

They are still a great battery...

But...

It really depends on where you vape, meaning ohms.

There are the Samsung 20S... great battery for 18650 mechs if raw power is all you need...but you will short cycle these being they are only 2000mAh.

Anyway I won’t preach amp draw or ratings, I have my feelings on that topic that goes against the grain, plus it’s all readily available for interpretation on brand X forums via Mooch’ s blog posts.

All I can suggest is get the best performing 18650 that fall within your ohm range...




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ScReWbALL

Silver Contributor
Member For 4 Years
A few years ago all I used were 5As in mechs.

Beyond their rating from Mooch to boot.

They are still a great battery...

But...

It really depends on where you vape, meaning ohms.

There are the Samsung 20S... great battery for 18650 mechs if raw power is all you need...but you will short cycle these being they are only 2000mAh.

Anyway I won’t preach amp draw or ratings, I have my feelings on that topic that goes against the grain, plus it’s all readily available for interpretation on brand X forums via Mooch’ s blog posts.

All I can suggest is get the best performing 18650 that fall within your ohm range...




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I vape my own coils...dual triple core alien coils 26/36 Ni80 that last I checked run at about .12-.15 ohm.
I haven’t tried the Samsung 20S’s...only the Samsung25R’s, which will work in place of my Sony’s if I have to use them. The 25R’s would work great for a bit but then go from taking full power hits to being dead with no warning. My vtc5a’s will at least give a death rattle of the battery hitting less and less hard so you know it’s change out time.
Do the Samsung20S act in the same regard as the 25R’s or will they give you a chance to swap out before going dead?


You’re not drinking water are you? You realize that’s an ingredient in antifreeze!
 

~Don~

Platinum Contributor
Member For 5 Years
I vape my own coils...dual triple core alien coils 26/36 Ni80 that last I checked run at about .12-.15 ohm.
I haven’t tried the Samsung 20S’s...only the Samsung25R’s, which will work in place of my Sony’s if I have to use them. The 25R’s would work great for a bit but then go from taking full power hits to being dead with no warning. My vtc5a’s will at least give a death rattle of the battery hitting less and less hard so you know it’s change out time.
Do the Samsung20S act in the same regard as the 25R’s or will they give you a chance to swap out before going dead?


You’re not drinking water are you? You realize that’s an ingredient in antifreeze!

25r batteries were great back in the day, but rather antiquated compared to current offerings.

The 20S will be a short use battery, 2000mAh and probably only 750mAh usable from mech usage... it’s relative to 2600mAh having maybe 1000mAh usable, which we swap out between 3.75-3.85v on a mech anyway...much different than regulated down to 3.2v... so it’s not OMG 2000mAh sucks.

But 20S are the hardest hitting 18650’s, and I can perceive when the oomph weakens.

I have a 4 pack of 20S... used them in my Immortal Modz Grip, worked great... just swapped them out more frequently than using 30Ts in the same mod.

TL;DR

Get some 20S, it’s the hardest hitting 18650 available to us mech heads... just not the longest running.

If you look at Mooch’s recommended battery list... look at mech... you can see the top performers...

0264dff8f46be568aebc92578a02d8cb.jpg


https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/attachments/7ed512cf-19d9-47e5-90c1-1048c4dd9bac-jpeg.847957/



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ScReWbALL

Silver Contributor
Member For 4 Years
25r batteries were great back in the day, but rather antiquated compared to current offerings.

The 20S will be a short use battery, 2000mAh and probably only 750mAh usable from mech usage... it’s relative to 2600mAh having maybe 1000mAh usable, which we swap out between 3.75-3.85v on a mech anyway...much different than regulated down to 3.2v... so it’s not OMG 2000mAh sucks.

But 20S are the hardest hitting 18650’s, and I can perceive when the oomph weakens.

I have a 4 pack of 20S... used them in my Immortal Modz Grip, worked great... just swapped them out more frequently than using 30Ts in the same mod.

TL;DR

Get some 20S, it’s the hardest hitting 18650 available to us mech heads... just not the longest running.

If you look at Mooch’s recommended battery list... look at mech... you can see the top performers...

0264dff8f46be568aebc92578a02d8cb.jpg


https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/attachments/7ed512cf-19d9-47e5-90c1-1048c4dd9bac-jpeg.847957/



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Do you happen to know a site that sells the 20S’s? All my local shops don’t carry them and Lionwholesale has them clearanced and sold out.


You’re not drinking water are you? You realize that’s an ingredient in antifreeze!
 

Mykreign

Platinum Contributor
Member For 5 Years
Hi screwball! Long time no see.

Do as Don says and get the 20s.

I replaced all my 5A's with them and i noticed a bump in power but not really life.

I'm guessing this is due to taking shorter hits because I'm getting the amount of vape I want sooner. But I'm no expert.

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Carambrda

Platinum Contributor
ECF Refugee
Member For 5 Years
Hi screwball! Long time no see.

Do as Don says and get the 20s.

I replaced all my 5A's with them and i noticed a bump in power but not really life.

I'm guessing this is due to taking shorter hits because I'm getting the amount of vape I want sooner. But I'm no expert.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
With a harder hitting battery, the discharge curve starts up higher. So basically, the Samsung 20S gets a head start when you compare it to the Sony VTC5A, and, even though the VTC5A catches up after some time, it doesn't actually matter if you vape on a mech at low resistances because, by the time it finally catches up, then the race is over on a mech.

For reasons that should be completely obvious, discharging a fully charged VTC5A battery continuously at 30 amps, like, if something goes wrong that causes it to be discharged continuously by accident, will cause it to get dangerously too hot so, to those who, like me, decide to go above the CDR of their battery, please don't recommend to anyone to do the same, as everyone is responsible for their own safety, and we don't want to make the kind of recommendations that would essentially take over someone else's safety related decisions when we can't be sure in any way that another person fully knows and understands the added risk resulting from that stuff so that's why we need to be considerate about what we recommend to others. Aside from that important notion, I am with @~Don~ on this particular subject because I think pretending that nobody vapes their mech above the CDR isn't going to improve anyone's safety. To me it makes all the perfect sense in the world that, immediately as soon as you're not looking, the cat will always jump right out of the box again anyway in the first place. So we might as well keep the cat from pitfalling, when we already know it only has nine lives.

That said, vaping the VTC5A down to 3.8 volts (resting voltage) in a mech translates to getting about 3.26 volts if we can assume you're drawing 30 amps. This is because the DC internal resistance of the VTC5A is about .018 ohms according to Mooch so 30 amps × .018 ohms = .54 volts worth of voltage sag, and, 3.8 volts - .54 volts = 3.26 volts. I made a mockup of Mooch's discharge curves just to give an idea where the VTC5A catches up. The third little up-arrow indicates approximately where it catches up if the discharge is continuous at a constant 30 amps. When we vape we only pulse our battery, not letting it discharge continuously, but this fact has little to no impact on which one of the two different batteries gives the most vaping time, i.e., as for the vaping time, the constant-current continuous discharge graphs are representative nevertheless, at least if we remember to take the DC internal resistance of each different battery correctly into account, like I previously explained above.

Samsung 20S vs VTC5A.jpg
 
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