I've had similarly inscrutable problems with nicads - One lot
of AAA's I went through had 25% defectives right out of the box.
I've learned not to assume that commercial chargers are properly
designed - I'm aware of several widely sold chargers which simply
trickle 15 ma into whatever is placed in them - A 500 mAh AA cell
takes ~46 hours to fully charge, a 4 Ah D cell 373 hours!

Jack

Wagner Lipnharski wrote:
>
> Heinz, NiCad is something like grape, sometimes you get a nice wine production
, sometimes not.  I really don't understand that, I need to exchange my screwdri
ver NiCad right after
> 6 months of use, memory probs or something, my video camera just need a new ba
t every year, some other NiCads, even NiH got flat in the shelf without any cons
ume, but I am using
> those Cadnica (yellow) 1.25V AA size (800mA), it can keep charge for more than
 a full year, inside some equipments we have, without any further charge, with a
 consume of 5uA for
> the power control circuits.
> Some other equipments we use other NiCads we got problems after some time. It
was a special production or what?
> Wagner.