Braun flash units and batteries

[spoolman]

I was given a number of Braun battery packs that had the #'s F80 and F800 along with several flash units that are made of grey plastic with a flash tube inside and others that have the flash tube assembly but with a grey plastic housing attached to it that holds a battery. I found a post here on Photrio detailing the poster's attempts to revive the battery packs.

My questions are are the battery packs safe to charge,can they and the flash units usable or am I wasting my time and energy with all of this ?. Images are in the works but again I don't want to put the effort out in case all of these items are no good.

Doug

 

[wiltw]

I cannot find the type of battery used in the two Braun flashes, so I will assume they are NiCad batteries (well before NiMH or Li ion RECHARGEABLES came into being). If you attempt to charge NiCad, they simply might not accept any charge at all.

If the batteries accept a charge, the second issue might be that the power capacitors have not been 'formed' in a very long time, so they leak their charge rather than storing charge. The capacitors might even fail (go bang), and if that happens the 'magic smoke' is let out and the flash will not work. If the issue is simply leaking capacitors, it may be possible to 're-form' them by simply turning on power from the battery and simply letting the unit sit (not fired) for a hour before powering off the unit leaving it unfired (and maybe repeating that cycle a number of times)

 

[AgX]

If you want them to keep for the show too, then leave them as they are and put them on the shelf directly.
If you want to use them be prepared that something goes wrong. I acquired a 60s flash where seemingly the main capacitator has blown and the generator housing has bulged. Another approach would be to charge the main capacitator on the mains and raise that voltage slowly at first charging as some think that would be benefitial for the main capacitator. What of course necessitates the appropriate power supply. The best approach for an old user flash would be to exchange main capacitator and NiCads from the start. Appropriate modern capacitators would be smaller, thus there likely would be no fitting issue. Finding apt NiCads would be harder.
I got quite some of these old flashes and so far have not used them, but someday I shall look into that issue.
I got an 80s flash that evolved a boiling sound at charging the main capacitator, another one got really hot at that...
(But that are really exceptions. Otherwise the worst I experience with "modern" flashes is a extremely long time for charging the capacitator at the first attempt, succesive chargings are normal.)