I have hundreds of these things, most of them new AAAs. I live off grid and have an addiction to cheap solar lights and rebuilding rechargable battery packs. Typically i either refurbish stuff with dead batteries but i also replace the Ni-Cads in perefectly good lights with bulk amazon li-ions, mostly solar lights from end of season dollar store sales where they are 50-75% off. So what do i do with all the Ni-cads? They suck but i have alot of them and they are new. If need be i'm autistic enough to solder together 100 of them into a 10 Ah 1.2v brick but what then? I guess if i really wanted to i could stack them in series parallel cell until i had something roughly equal in capacity (and three times the size) to a 12v marine battery. I would very much like to know if it would be useful before i solder together 1000 AAA batteries.
>>2880175We use NiCd for all our mobile radio equipment.NiCd is used for a lot of outdoor applications.> three times the sizeIn general, it would be around half the size.
>>2880187The easy application i can think of would be to make something roughly equal to a 12v marine battery with a small solar charge maintainer, it would be used to start a 1985 F250 that only runs 3-4 times a year in the dead of winter. Not sure how it woulds interact with a 1985 250s electrical system, i know it could charge the battery (12v system and 43 amp alternator) but i think it might charge it too fast, it might melt the solder between the individual AAAs with the current if there was a single bad cell that wasn't in series.That or a street light.
>>2880187>In general, it would be around half the size.The case would be 3/8ths plywood with hobby board/1/4 inch Lauan seperating the cells , it would have about 1000 AAAs. That is alot of soldering if it doesn't work out. I guess i could come up with a plan to make a bunch of 1 Ah 1.2 volt cells and if i can link 10 of them great, if not then each cell is a 1 LED solar yard light that stays on for 2-3 years between sunny days.
>>2880175bring to transfer station, put in box labeled "NICAD"
>>2880175>What to do with huge pile of Ni-cads?nicad/nimh are shit. toss them.
>>2880175If they aren't low capacity noname chinkshit, you might be able to sell them on ebay. Some people still want/need ni-cd
If they were stacked to 13.2 volts the 14.6v from a solar charger set for Li-ions should safely charge them right? 9000 MAh should be enough for a decent LED street light.
Where are you getting NiCd's from? I haven't seen anything other than NiMH in forever. I was under the impression NiCd offered no benefits over them but now I'm curious.If you try to join them together, be very careful about cell balancing. In both series and parallel configuration one cell having significantly different charging characteristics from the others can ruin the whole pack.
>>2880175>before i solder together 1000 AAA batteriessoldering AAA cells carries a risk of harming the cellsthere are tricks to reduce the harm, but i still recommend nickel-strip spot welding insteadlots of youtube videos on how to do that, using a car battery, or a modified microwave oven transformer
