Yup rechargables can be a mare. The people at Aldi (ahem, sorry) here in Germland do them evey year and every year I and dozens of others fall for them in being attracted by their price. They are now all NiMH or sometimes Lithium-ion rechargeables, and have a good total capacity, but they seem to eke out every last tenth of an mm on the tolerances and that's exactly when they get stuck. The problem seems to be that they are wrapped in a plastic heatshrink film with all the logos and technical details, and this is a tick thicker than the coating the big brands use, and the shape of the battery boy is a teeny bit different. This can be enough that the +nipple never reaches into the depth of a toy or that there's too much friction on the sides, and then they get stuck on the way out. This has been a problem with numerous budget / no name rechargeables
so..for rechargable fun:- take a very close look at the blister pack duracell / energizer / varta,,,,alkaline batteries that are on sale in the same shop. If the rechargeables seem to have exactly the same shape, and I mean exactly, then you have a good chance that they will work, making contact, and you'll be able to get them out to charge them afterwards. Look especially around the nipple, areolae so to speak, as this may gives clues as to whether you'll have extraction problems later.
Those that tend to be OK geometrically and offer a decent life are from the big names, so do shop around for a good price but beware two expensive mistakes:
bargain 1: the mAh capacity is smaller, say 1400mAh instead of 2000mAh and so the battery lasts a shorter time than the full price ones up the road, so read carefully
bargain 2: the lithium camera batteries, in AA format. As expensive as or more than some rechargables, have very high performance and long life. But you cannot recharge them. Good for cameras, bad for the vibes, so read carefully here, too..
So to enjoy rechargeable fun you need to look before you leap. It's a shame to trash a vibe having saved a couple of quid on the batteries.
Hi merry cherry, Ebay are very good with there prices 10 duracell AA BATTERIES for around £2.60 free postage. If you live near a home bargain store they sell duracell AA £1.49 for four which still beats supermarket prices
I've found with my rechargeables that the Duracell ones are the most likely to get stuck but I've got some Sony ones that are fine in all toys, very strange!
I put my Duracells in my Evolved toy last night & it went all weird just buzzed, the control button wouldn't work at all, I panicked cos I love it so much but when I put the Sony ones in it was fine again, very odd....
Could have wept with frustration last night - have had the 'movable' actions of two rabbits pack up very soon after they arrived (though LH have been great about refunding on them) - and was looking forward to 3rd time lucky with this one that had been recommended in a previous posting
Rechargables are an extremely tight fit - they sit directly in rather than in a 'holder' as with the rabbits I had - and for some reason it seems the 'contacts' just don't make contact. They didn't slip out - they needed heavy duty leverage to remove them - enough to shoot them across the bed
The batteries are working fine in other devices - so it looks like I'll have to buy some ordinary ones to give it to a try
G*d - if this one is faulty too - I'm gonna start thinking someone's trying to tell me something!!!!!!!
In France for now: rechargeable batteries can be bit different from normal ones and bit bigger although it can be by a milimetr. But enough to get stuck in some toys. Not all, but some toys and rechargeable batteries dont go along too well. So far I did not have any problems with 2toys I own, but my newer toys are rechargeable, so I am not testing it these days. The vibe should be working fine if you get them out, in many cases it does. But nightmare to get them out.
The problem over the size of rechargeables stems from some manufacturers literally pushing the envelope in order to gain an advantage in the capacity race. Some NiMH AAs are giving (or claiming) 3000mAh capacity and in my experience these larger capacity cells are slightly bigger in diameter and slightly longer than alkaline AAs. There seems to be much less of a problem with the more modest capacity NiMH cells of say 1700mAh in an AA package.
The issue of voltage is slightly deceiving as the 1.2v quoted is what you get from a pretty flat NiMH cell. A fully charged NiMH gives between 1.4 and 1.45v. Also the internal resistance of NiMH cells is much lower than that of alkaline cells. This means that in high current applications (such as vibrators) the cell voltage sags less under load (partially offsetting the lower off-load voltage of the rechargeable cell). However, the down-side of this low internal resistance comes if you happen to short a rechargeable cell out. It then delivers a large current and gets very hot very quickly (along with whatever is shorting it out). This could just give another unwanted angle to the old gag about "do you smoke after sex?"
Thanks for the technical info Gyrator 53 - had always used rechargeables for cameras/torches etc and never considered it would be a problem in toys - must admit this lot do seem to get very hot in the charger (2500mAh and 2000mAh) but they have probably only had 4 or 5 recharges max.
Off out this afternoon to buy some ordinary ones - to give my new "friend" a second chance
Hella - You really shouldn't have those sort of problems with rechargeable cells. We use bucket-loads in our business in pretty high discharge applications far more demanding than a vibrator. Brand-wise we have everything from Varta and Sanyo (quality-wise read BMW & Lexus) down to GP (read Kia) and we get hundreds of cycles out of them. The oldest pack we have actually dates from the mid 1980s!
Getting hot in use suggests one or more cells not properly charged and becoming reverse charged during use. There are some rubbish chargers out there which are probably the main cause of such issues.
Thanks for the technical info Gyrator 53 - had always used rechargeables for cameras/torches etc and never considered it would be a problem in toys - must admit this lot do seem to get very hot in the charger (2500mAh and 2000mAh) but they have probably only had 4 or 5 recharges max.
Off out this afternoon to buy some ordinary ones - to give my new "friend" a second chance
As I mentioned to Hella the chargers are often a problem. The simple way to charge them is a 14 hour charge at a constant current of 1/10th of their Ah capacity (i.e 170mA for a 1700mAh cell). However, people don't want to wait 14 hours so there are fast chargers. Good fast chargers are great - they can charge a battery in 20 minutes but they monitor the cell voltage accurately to detect a turn-over in the cell voltage at full charge (so called delta-peak charging). Despite the fact that this can be done for buttons these days lots of fast chargers just dump bigger currents in and let the cells cook with overcharging if you leave them too long.