My C9000 is a miracle worker!

N8N

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Apr 26, 2013
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Back in the day when I first started watching this august forum and my eyes were opened to the fact that my LED Mag-Lite was not, in fact, even close to the SOTA of flashlight technology. At the same time I was getting disillusioned with alkaline cells as this was when I was starting to notice that they'd leak before they went completely dead, forcing me to use distilled water, Deoxit etc. to salvage some of my tools/lights. One of the very first purchases I bought back then was a Fenix TK41 and a pile of Maha Powerex and Eneloop AA cells. (this was back before you could buy Duracell Ion Cores in the supermarket, you actually had to ORDER these things unless you had a Micro Center nearby in which you actually could buy Tenergy cells.) I also figured I should have a good charger, so after reading up I bought a Maha C9000.

Fast forward to a couple days ago. I haven't used the TK41 in forever but was hoping to dig it out as I was going to be doing some wiring in a just-built shed, and somewhere I have a lantern diffuser for it that I bought when I bought the light. Difficulty: it's been in the back of my Jeep for about a year and apparently at some point it got turned on and all eight cells were dead, dead, deader than a doornail, so dead that I had to jump start them to even get a charger to recognize them as cells. So I charged them up, discharged them (at which point they read somewhere about 200-300 mAh each) and then ran a break in cycle on the C9000. Last night I powered up the light again and it stayed on all night on low mode and it still had all modes when I left for work this morning. I put four of the cells back in the C9000 to charge up.

So basically the C9000 just saved me from having to buy $24 worth of new cells by bringing these back to life. So if it does this once more it'll have paid for itself. I try not to abuse cells but stuff happens.

Now if I had to do it over again I probably would have bought a 18650 powered light, but at the time I was a little scared of Li-Ions and also was standardizing on AAs as I was also replacing all the cells in my remote controls and little hand tools (laser distance finders, IR thermometers, humidity meters, multimeters etc.)
 

Gauss163

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Oct 20, 2013
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^^^ You can do the same with any decent modern charger with cycling capability. There's nothing unique about the C9000 in that regard.
 

magellan

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That was good of you to put your C9000 to work on that task, which it does very well. I have one myself (as well as several other similar chargers) and as you found out it can save you some real money.

At this point I've been phasing out of alkalines for several years in favor of quality LSD NiMH batteries like the Eneloops. I'll probably never buy another alkaline battery at this point. Occasionally I still acquire an alkaline or two because they came with a purchase, but that's about it.
 
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N8N

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Apr 26, 2013
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^^^ You can do the same with any decent modern charger with cycling capability. There's nothing unique about the C9000 in that regard.

True; however a) I bought this years ago (at the recommendation of this group mostly) and b) you still can't get a "decent modern charger" in retail stores at least none around me. Today, maybe I'd buy the SkyRC charger? I don't know. But the C9000 has served me well, well enough that when another one came up for cheap on an unrelated group I snagged it for my desk at work.

That was good of you to put your C9000 to work on that task, which it does very well. I have one myself (as well as several other similar chargers) and as you found out it can save you some real money.

At this point I've been phasing out of alkalines for several years in favor of quality LSD NiMH batteries like the Eneloops. I'll probably never buy another alkaline battery at this point. Occasionally I still acquire an alkaline or two because they came with a purchase, but that's about it.

Yep, that's where I'm at too. I guess I was just posting to point out that sometimes the extra money spent on a "good" charger rather than a basic one can actually also save money long term.
 
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