AA Batteries from 6V?

[BARGuy]

Just got an email from a buddy of mine that knows I use quite a few AA batteries. He attached a video showing some guy dismantling a "square" 6 volt "fence charger" battery.

Bottom line, out popped 32 unlabeled AA's! My assumption is they're the same coppertop quality as the big one.

Have I been missing something? Does anybody do this?

Inquiring mind(s) want to know!

 

[Woodland Detectors]

I may be a little tired but, you lost me there

 

[lumbercamp]

Urban legend.

 

[mts]

I buy a pack of 24 AA batteries when they go on sale at Harbor Freight for $4.99. This is a way better deal for AA's than trying to hack open a 6V lantern battery that costs as much as $12.

As someone else said, this is also expected to be a hoax. Check out snopes and youtube for videos of what is really inside these batteries. If anything, it makes more sense to use 4 D cell batteries as they have the current capability required to deliver the rated power. AA's don't. I'm not saying that you couldn't make a 6V lantern battery out of AA's. But it would be going about it the hard way. You'd be wiring some of them in series and some of them in parallel which is not a good way to make a battery. Putting batteries in parallel can have unstable results if their voltages are not exactly the same. Batteries with a slightly lower voltage end up sinking current which makes them hot or potentially explode if they are not capable of handling it.

But go ahead and open a 6V lantern battery and show us what's inside. I'm curious to know what the truth is. I expect though that it varies by battery manufacturer. And I also suspect that the videos you see are staged. Why people would do such a thing I really don't know. It makes no sense for people to lie about that kind of stuff. But hey, there are a lot of crazy people in this world. Maybe the makers of 6V lantern batteries are trying to increase sales.

 

[BARGuy]

Don't look to ME to conduct the investigation! Some things are best left to the young & adventurous! That's why I posted the to begin with. I just KNEW somebody hereabouts had already done it!

Anyway, thanx folks!

 

[l.cutler]

I did open a lantern battery and it did not have AA's in it. Perhaps some brands do but mine didn't.

 

[mts]

Urban legend.

I just DID IT with a 9 volt..

So I guess I staged THAT..

A 9V is different. The video posted above for a 9V is not staged and that's what a lot of 9V batteries look like inside. However, getting 32 AA's from a 6V lantern battery is not common because that would be a hard way to make a 6V battery. Battery cells are 1.5V and come in all different sizes. They are typically connected in series to get the voltage necessary. You do not want to hook them in parallel in order to increase power/current because it can be dangerous. So the 9V makes sense because they hook 6 small 1.5V cells in series and you get 9V. If you wanted to make a good 6V lantern battery you would hook 4 large 1.5V cells in series which is what you typically see inside most lantern batteries if you open them. It doesn't make much sense to put 32 AA's inside of a 6V battery because that would be going about it the hard way. Now it is possible that you could find a cheaply made 6V battery that uses AA size batteries. But I would expect that they would be cheap batteries too. You'll get what you pay for. The 6V battery itself will be cheaply made and won't last nearly as long as a well made battery.

Also, even the 9V video is a little misleading. The cells you get are nowhere near anything that you can buy. You can't just put them in place of a AAA because they are too small and their current capability is much smaller. It would be like trying to put AAA's in a place where AA's are supposed to be used. Sure, you could make it work temporarily with duct tape and a little luck. But you wouldn't want to rely on it long term. If a 6V battery really does have "32 AA's" in it then they likely aren't true AA's anyway. They could be smaller or bigger or have less power capability. You certainly wouldn't want to rely on them to work the same way as regular AA's. The video I've seen of a guy taking apart a 6V looks like the batteries would just be regular duty and not alkalines. You can buy regular duty batteries like this pretty cheap so it probaly isn't worth your time.

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

HI: Perhaps I am mistaken, but it is the 12 v battery that is claimed to have the AAA batteries. As for the 9V, most that I have handled have an entirely different type of internal construction, semi open, series cells.

However today you can purchase large packs of AAA in many discount houses, such as
Price Club, Sam's, Harbor freight, etc., at competitive prices with the physical size, power delivery and capacities for which your unit was designed for, so why bother?

Don Jose de La Mancha