Well, this is the way I use to do it and I got the info from a ham 
friend years ago.  Put a load on the pack and put it in the frig over 
night and let it run completely down that way.  The cold does something 
to the chemistry.  When you take  it out, remove the load and 
immediately put on the charger.  If the cells are shorted, you hit them 
with very current from a power supply that won't current limit or I've 
even used a car battery.  Make sure the polarity is right and hit it for 
just a fraction of a second.  This will often remove the tiny shorts 
that develop internally.  Once you do this, put  it on the charger, put 
on a load to discharge it and treat as above.  I've found that often 
the shorts return.  Another thing worth noting is that although nickel 
hydrides don't have the memory problem nicads do, they can short the 
same way internally.

73
Butch Bussen
wa0vjr
open Node 3148
Las Vegas


On Sat, 23 Jan 2010, Colin McDonald wrote:

> does anyone have any effective methods of reconditioning a Ni-Cad battery
> pack?
> I've got a 4.8VDC pack made up of four AA Ni-Cad cells for a scanner, and I
> want to recondition it.
> It's only $15 for a new one, but I want to try and restore this one first
> since I've heard there is some success when reconditioning Ni-Cad cells.
>
> 73
> Colin, V A6BKX
>
>