Mark,
According to 'The Olympus OM Way (pp 247) the relay cord was meant to
match both the Grip and the NiCd pack - and of course also the AC
Control box which cannot operate without it.
Inside the NiCad pack there is nothing but a diode in the circuit for
incoming current. (I know because, long ago, I have adapted the
circuitry in one of my 18V grips to be able to use 750 mAh NiCad AA
cells in it and use the original charger to recharge the resulting
'grip NiCd pack'. Replacing 12 AA cells and recharge them separately
was a real pain. The charging from the Olympus NiCad charger took 5
times as long as the original NiCad pack.... but 'overcharging' was
practically impossible)
So there is no current limiter AFAIK. I think that the fact that
Olympus tells us not to use anything over 16 V DC for an external
power source is a way of tackling the problem: the NiCad pack cannot
easily be damaged when only 16 volt DC is applied.
BTW as pointed out by Piers Hemy I was mistaken in another point: of
course one cannot use the AC box together with the NiCad pack. sorry!
Frank.
On 28 Oct 2003 09:33:24 -0500 (EST), Mark Dapoz <md@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, Frank van Lindert wrote:
>
>Frank,
>
>> But IMHO the implication of this is, that connecting ANY power source
>> to the motor drive (e.g. a 16 volt battery, without any current
>> limiter at all!) would not only provide energy operate it but also at
>> the same time charge the NiCad pack continously. Would that indeed be
>> true?
>
>Officially the relay cords are designed to connect *only* to the Control
>Grip or M.AC Control Box, not the Ni-Cd Pack. I suspect there is some
>circuitry present in those two units to limit the current. If the relay
>cord is connected to the Ni-Cd Pack and a power source is present, it
>will indeed both charge the pack and operate the drive. I suspect that's
>why Olympus doesn't recommend using it with the Ni-Cd Pack. That and the
>fact that the cord falls off the Ni-Cd Pack very easily.
> -mark
>
>
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