Khadijah

I'm trying to charge my 901 battery for the first time. The batt has an extremely loose fit in the charger. I have tried pushing it in hard, but it's still lose. So loose in fact that there is no real connection. The charger is green weather or not the batt is in it.

Are the batts supposed to fit loosley? I have to tip the charger with batt up so the batt doesn't fall out. What's up?

Khadijah

Never mind. I just figured it out. The batt has to be screwed into the charger. Thanks anyway!

Rocketman

All battery chargers are not equal.

Something I've noticed, but have not run an extensive analysis on (might have to get my engineers to do that) is some chargers seem to do a better job than others.

From what I have read the Li-ion battery is a difficult beast to charge correctly. The initial charge current has to be limited to keep the battery from going thermal (becomes a pocket warmer). That is an easy task to do electronically and I think most chargers do that. The building current also has to be low enough not to heat the battery, build up to terminal voltage too quickly or a 'full' charge won't be obtained. Then when the battery gets very close to terminal voltage (about 4.2 volts for most Li-ion e-cigs) it has to continue to just top off the battery. It needs to cut off completely at some point since trickle charging for long periods damages the electrodes in the battery. This is the most difficult part of the charging process for a Li-ion battery.

This is different than the older NiCad batteries a lot of folks are used to. You could kick a NiCad to full charge at 30 times it's maH rating (special fast charge low resistance cells) in 15 minutes and leave then on trickle charge for months.
Some smart chargers for Li-ion batteries use a timed charge at terminal voltage then stop, some approach terminal voltage very slowly and stop at some predetermined voltage like 4.203 or something like that, hoping that that is 'Fully Charged'. Variations between batteries make that approach a little inaccurate as one battery may stop charging at 90% charge and another makes it to 100%. A little trickle charge at the end probably won't hurt much.
Some chargers are set up to take a battery that as about 30 to 40% charge left in it, that's where most give you the "Blue Light Special", and charge it to 100% then stop. I don't think all chargers 'know' how to handle a battery at maybe 60 to 80% charge. Maybe just overcharge it a little, who knows.

Some of the chargers I have for both the 901 and 510 seem to work better than others. Most of my one piece USB chargers seem to stop charging early. I have about a dozen. Pretty handy, but don't seem to top of as well as the hockey puck AC mains type. And, the rounded end pucks seem to work better than the rectangle ones. The hockey puck also has a 12volt connector that accepts a car adapter (about a $3 accessory not a $10 accessory please) and work fine with that. Just more cords in the car, that's all. We used a 3 way cigarette lighter adapter in one of the rear seat lighters wells, 5 total charging ports in the car and hooked up two cell chargers, a GPS, and 2 hockey puck adapters on vacation, cords everywhere.
Had to disconnect something to charge the lap top though.

This morning, I put a 510 battery I had vaped a little on, in one of the USB chargers in a AC adapter and charged until the red light went out. Put it in a hockey puck and it charged a little more until the red light went out again.
The reverse, started with the hockey puck, and transferred to the USB charger and the USB thought it was charged. The swamp lady had noticed the same thing with the 901 chargers and only uses the rectangle hockey pucks when she is mass charging a bunch. Even then she passes each through a rounded end puck to top off.

Again, no voltage, state of charge data, just perceptions here, but some do seem to work better than others. They all work pretty good though.

The Rocket