Battery Bandit WTF?

[Mosey]

I put my new DRO remotes up on the wall to get them out of the way until I make proper bracket for them, and within 1 day, all 4 of the lithium batteries were dead! They were magnetically attached to my Phase Converter box. There must be some phantoms in the box that come out at night and eat my batteries. Anyone know what's going on?
See it? it's the blue box up on the wall!

 

[smfr]

Maybe there is condensation forming inside the battery compartments, and that's shorting the batteries?

 

[Mosey]

Nope, that's not it.

 

[lazylathe]

Send the mill and the DRO setup to me and i will exorcise the phantoms! ;D

May take a few decades to get them good and truly gone though....

Andrew

 

[Mosey]

Anywhere near Pembroke?
I'll drive em over.
Mud season yet?

 

[rake60]

How warm is that location?

Lithium batteries do not like heat.

Rick

 

[Mosey]

The location is room temperature, but the phase converter may heat up when the machine runs for a while. I'll investigate. Both of the 3 volts buttons in each of the 2 remotes were 1.5 volts. Dead. Interesting idea. Very strange.

 

[Ed T]

I'm not a sparky and i don't play one on TV, but my first guess would be that the Phase converter is making some transient magnetic fields that are inducing some current in the remotes. The currents are working "against" the batteries and depleting them. Lithium cells do not have a lot of energy to start with so it wouldn't take much. I think I would stick them to something else. I don't know whether the remotes came with the magnetic mounts or not, but I'd be a bit leery of magnets so close to electronics unless they are properly isolated. Do you remember the story of the floppy discs and the refrigerator magnets?

 

[f350ca]

Anywhere near Pembroke?
I'll drive em over.
Mud season yet?

Yep, need four wheel drive to get through my drive.
Greg

 

[Mosey]

The phase converter doesn't heat up much, and they do come with weak magnets in the. Me thinks I better build that bracket.

 

[Don1966]

Mosey has it depleted any new batteries since it killed the first ones. I have had bad batteries in my DRO before. Another thing I found is that for some reason they get turned on and stay on will you are away. It is hard for me to say if I accidently turn them on or they did by the self. But I don't believe you convertor made them go dead. It has a metal cover and it would take a good size magneti field to doing it any harm and phase converters has capacitors and relay in them.

Regards Don

 

[Mosey]

It knows I'm watching now, so we'll see if any more go bad. I'm careful to turn them off when I shut down, and I'm not going to put them on the converter again, so if it goes bad while on the mill, we'll know the batteries are junk. They came with it, and are "Daily-Max" brand. Didn't come with rice, though. Since they only cost $1.00, I'll get some made in the old USA and see what happens.

 

[Maryak]

I don't know about DRO's but I have a digital caliper of Eastern Manufacture and the only way to get an acceptable life out of the battery is to remove it until you want to use it. Apparently when the caliper is switched off, it draws current to keep the memory remembering, even if there is nothing stored therein.

Hope this helps

Best Regards
Bob

 

[tel]

That has been my experience as well Bob

 

[Ken I]

Much the same - however I have a caliper that really does turn off and the batteries last ages. Every time you turn it on you must zero / reset it.

If you turn on your caliper and the information / position is still there then all that turned off was the display - yeehaa.

Try moving the scale when its off - if the system keeps up then it was not really "off".

2c

Ken

 

[Swede]

Odd... my cheap calipers run for a couple years with memory intact before they need new batteries.

I buy those "357" cells online in bulk, IIRC at 25 cents each rather than a couple dollars at a drug store battery display.

 

[Mosey]

My Mitutoyo digital micrometer stays on ALL the time. Very annoying and wasteful, but it lasts at least a year on one of those silver oxide buttons.