Help with Battery vs. AC Adapter

1335 Views 4 Replies 3 Participants Last post by Figtreejohn, Sep 30, 2015

Figtreejohn

Discussion Starter · Sep 29, 2015

Hey Guys,
I have one of those handheld torches that use 2 C batteries. If left on the batteries die in like an hour. I made my own battery eliminator device and attached it to a 4.8vdc wall wart. Now these batteries are 3vdc combined right? So 4.8v should be plenty, or am I backward? When I plugged it in all I got was weak torch light and barely any movement in the fan. Am I going about this all wrong?

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J-Man

· #2 · Sep 29, 2015

Well first of all, you never wanna up the voltage to any device unless it is specified to be OK. If your device runs on 3v then that's what you should stick with. Chances are that your 4.8v wall wart didn't have a high enough mah rating to power the device.

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Nebulosity

· #3 · Sep 30, 2015

General rule of thumb of power suppplies is you want the volts as close as possible and the amperage at least as the same if not higher. If your batteries have a capacity of 3000mAh, and they die in an hour, you're using about 3000mAh/1h = 3000mA or 3A. The actual time to die is probably a bit longer - most batteries put out less voltage as they're depleted so they might appear to be dead when they're just weak. I'd guess that you want something close to 1A, maybe 2A. You can never have too many amps.

Also, according to the chart I found the typical voltage of a C battery is 1.2V, so 2 would be 2.4V.

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