Battery safety.

[FuriasRevenge]

Hey guys, so I'm a somewhat experienced vaper, and I have some questions about battery safety.

I've been using the same copper fuhattan mech mod for about a year, and I just recently bought a Fuchai 200w TC and a Mutation XV4 rda. The build I have on here is 6 rap Kanthal reading out to .14 ohms. I know thats pretty low, even for this rda. I'm wondering if its dangerous to put this build on a mech mod. Furthermore, I'm wondering if there's any settings on my new Fuchai that I should avoid.

One more question. I've heard lots of talk about marrying batteries for series mods and regulated devices. I own three batteries, and they've all been used irregularly on my mech mod. Is it really dangerous or not okay to use these batteries in my new regulated mod? What am I actually risking? I do have two brand new imren batteries that I'll keep married in the future, but in the meantime I'm just wondering. Also, is it okay to mix and match different batteries in my mod, even if they are potentially of different amperage ratings? (I have one battery the amperage rating of which I don't know, which I use sparingly and very carefully)

 

[aldenf]

Hi, @FuriasRevenge . Welcome to VU!

That 0.14Ω build will pull 30 amps on a freshly charged battery. It should be relegated to regulated and multi-cell parallel mechs only. Vape up to the constant discharge rate (CDR) limit of your battery(ies). Use any "pulsed-discharge" rate as safety headroom

Personally, I wouldn't vape the Fuchai above 150W (read on). What do you risk by not using a brand new, identical, married pair in your new Fuchai? What do all of us risk? Look at the photo below. I haven't seen any other details but Joyetech was part of the investigation and determined the board is still fine. This leads us to believe it was either user error or simple battery failure. The purple battery appears to be an IMREN. The other is unidentified. Were they counterfeit? Did they have appropriate specs for the mod? Were they identical batteries, the same age? Were they married? What we do is not completely without its dangers. But we can limit our exposure.

Batteries age with each charge/discharge cycle. Internal resistances degrade, altering charge/discharge characteristics. Different battery models have different specs. We want the batteries to charge and discharge evenly together so one doesn't go over or under safe voltage levels. These are series mods, which means the last battery in the circuit (furthest from the board) will probably drain a bit faster and charge a bit later. This can be dangerous if one battery over charges or discharges.

The new regulated chipsets should keep us reasonably safe. Mods like the Cuboid, Reuleux RX200 and DNA200 devices monitor each cell independently, preventing over-charging/discharging. I don't know about the Fuchai. Do yourself a favor. Start with a high quality charger (NiteCore, Luc, etc). Grab yourself a new pair of high quality, identical, properly speced, reliably branded batteries, from a trusted vendor. Marry them. Label them #1 & #2. Label the battery chambers in the mod #1 & #2. On odd days of the month, put #1 battery in #1 chamber and #2 battery in #2 chamber. On even days, swap them. You don't have to be anal about it, just careful. Your health and safety and of those around you are worth it. If you have multiple sets of batteries, label them A1 & A2, B1 & B2, etc. Keep them married. This is how I've managed my batteries for my multi-cell series and parallel mechs and APVs.

Realize that a regulated APV, pushing 200W into your atty, is pulling a total of 47.6 amps from your batteries, at full charge. After the batteries drop below 4v charge, the device limits itself to 150W. These devices should be marketed as 150W. This is why Joyetech does so with their Cuboid. If you want a TRUE 200 watts, get yourself a Reuleaux RX200 or a DNA200 mod in triple-cell (200W) configuration.

For further reading, I recommend this blog entry, outside of VU: https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/f...ics-for-mods-the-ultimate-battery-guide.4848/ The author has many good entries in his blog.

Trusted Battery manufacturers: LG, Samsung, Sony & AW. (There are other choices but I recommend sticking with these four.) A pair of LG or Samsungs will cost you $12ish or less. Don't nickel and dime yourself. AW batts are ridiculously expensive, however.

LG: 18650HE2, 18650HG2
Samsung: 1865025R, 1865030Q (Even the 30Qs, at only 15A CDR, are highly questionable for 200W but fine for 150W.)
Sony: 18650VTC4, 18650VTC5
AW: 18650 20 amp CDR, 18650 24 amp CDR

Trusted Vendors (I'm sure there are many but I can personally recommend these three): rtdvapor.com, orbtronic.com & illumn.com. I'm not saying that other vendors are evil, though I've seen unsuspecting shop owners receive counterfeit batteries from their suppliers (who may also have been unaware). RTD, Orbtronic and Illumn purchase their batteries from manufacturer-approved distributors.

Good luck, be safe and vape on!

 

[OBDave]

Absolutely great response from @aldenf, and welcome to the Underground, @FuriasRevenge

In short, it's never safe to use a battery you don't know the specs on - that includes trusting the fake specs on re-wrapped batteries like Imren. There's no way to do this "carefully." It's probably not a good idea to run a 0.14 build on a single-cell mech, definitely not unless you're using 30 amp cells (there are only a few that exist - most that claim 35 or 40 are actually 20 amp or less and claiming entirely bogus specs). Check out @Mooch (he's way more active over on the other forum, which @aldenf linked to above) for good info on true battery ratings.