Cadex Battery Analyzers still a worthwhile tool to have around?

[tropiradio]

Cadex C7400 systems still work very well for conditioning batteries and prolonging their service life. Motorola has told me to just use their IMPRES series chargers, but already having C7400 systems spread across a nationwide company, we continue to use them. Cadex cups for the APX6/7/8000 series are about $160 each (placed an order a few days ago), and we go directly to Cadex in Canada. I do not know of any vendors in the United States....but there are probably a few, such as Tessco for example.

Nice setup. Seems like you have been in business with these a good while.
You wouldn't by any chance have any older battery adaptors like for CP185/EP350, or CP200d/EP450 radios that you don't need anymore? Also looking for an adapter for XPR3/7 radios, but I know those will probably still widely be in use to this day.

BTW I contacted the Cadex representative for Florida (mancetech.com) listed on their website, but they don't have -anything at all- Cadex in stock, they would just have any order drop shipped from Canada, or send people to go directly to the Cadex website to place their order. At least the guy that contacted me was quite nice and helpful.

So I ended up ordering the replacement adapter pins directly from Cadex by using a VPN that gives me a US based IP but its been almost a week and my order still has not been shipped even tough I got a confirmation email for my order indicating it would be shipped 8/11, and besides had to pay for expensive Fedex shipping as they would not provide any alternate shipping method even for such a small item and still take at least a week just to get the order out the door.

 

[n0fwg]

I think if you go Help > About you might be able to see your version.

I had to move a monitor back to that PC and power it up.. The version I have is 7.1.1.0.3 Copyright 2008,

Purchased a Bixolon STP-103II off eBay, got it working as printer but the formatting is off along with printing a lot of info, a second one turned out to have proprietary firmware for POS system so it will not print at all. Scan attached

I will stick with the older Dymo SE-300 and SE-450 with Label Value LV-004 for putting on the battery after test. It must be the SE series printer to work You can change the Cadex Electronics name to your company name.

Jerry

 

[tropiradio]

I had to move a monitor back to that PC and power it up.. The version I have is 7.1.1.0.3 Copyright 2008,

I think you got the last version they ever made available, as it seems they never moved on to release a newer one. Just kept milking the same old cow but of course update the price to match the times, and add a few new batteries to the database file. If you go to Cadex tech support section and open BatteryShop software, at the bottom you will see that the last listed database update (from 2019!) is described as being for version 7.1 (actually its the same link for all 6, 7, and 7.1 versions as all links point to the same bsmodels_2.txt file). They are not exactly keeping up much in that sense either I would say if its been almost 4 years since they last released a battery database update. I also understand that this last version is graphically still designed or rather confined for smaller screens and resolution of the time (2008), and internal windows cannot be resized to either make them bigger (no resize handles) or much less to make it better fit the screen of a modern machine to take better advantage of much larger real estate.

Purchased a Bixolon STP-103II off eBay, got it working as printer but the formatting is off along with printing a lot of info, a second one turned out to have proprietary firmware for POS system so it will not print at all. Scan attached

Yes formatting is definitively not looking 100% ideal but not too bad either maybe even usable if nothing else. So that firmware issue is definitively something to look out for when buying second hand one of these printers off ebay. My guess is that 99% of them where for POS usage. I was actually only going for this printer as I thought the DYMO ones where older and less chances to get one in still decent working condition.

I will stick with the older Dymo SE-300 and SE-450 with Label Value LV-004 for putting on the battery after test. It must be the SE series printer to work You can change the Cadex Electronics name to your company name.

That is valuable information thank you. The SE stands for SErial port, as otherwise the other model is USB and the 7400-C firmware does not supoort printing on USB.

 

[tropiradio]

I will stick with the older Dymo SE-300 and SE-450 with Label Value LV-004 for putting on the battery after test. It must be the SE series printer to work You can change the Cadex Electronics name to your company name.

The SE-300 seems to be the better choice, for one it has an internal power supply whereas the 450 uses an external brick. There are also at this moment zero SE-450 listed. I see the data port is a RJ11 jack? How does that work, guess mandatory to get a printer with at least the RJ11 to DB9 data cable included. Did you have to use the DB9 gender changer with that cable? Cadex 7400C manual says it is required.

 

[n0fwg]

The SE-450 is a rare one, Yes you need to to use a DB9 gender changer with the Dymo serial cable

 

[tropiradio]

I will stick with the older Dymo SE-300 and SE-450 with Label Value LV-004 for putting on the battery after test. It must be the SE series printer to work You can change the Cadex Electronics name to your company name.

The whole RJ to DB serial cable wiring is shown on page 12 of the manual:

https://download.dymo.com/UserManuals/se300%20manual.pdf

And it uses a 6-pin RJ connector.

 

[tropiradio]

The SE-450 is a rare one, Yes you need to to use a DB9 gender changer with the Dymo serial cable

With the cable info on the manual one could easily build your own cable and attach the correct (male) DB9 to match the female one on the Cadex and skip the gender changer insert.

 

[brndnstffrd]

I had no idea those SE-450's were so hard to find. We have a couple in use at work.

A few months ago, our resident bonehead (not me) decided to "fix" his. (It wasn't even broken.) Needless to say he was left with a pile of parts on the table after putting it back together. "No idea where that came from." And then when re-re-assembling it, a ribbon cable was ran "the same way they had it", which of course ended up pinched and then severed. Needless to say, the printer ended up in the trash. As I say quite regularly, it's a good thing I'm not his supervisor.

 

[n0fwg]

Some people just like to tinker and break things.. If it not broke, do not fix it still applies..

There is a SE-450 on eBay right now..

 

[tropiradio]

Regarding the Dymo SE-450 printer, I recently noticed that they use that model or a very similar one (but definitively a Dymo printer) at at my local airport security office to issue temporary stick on your shirt IDs to get into the air side. I do have multiple customers among the private ground service operators (Signature, Menzies, etc) that use my radios so I go there with some frequency, and it is usually a 50-50 chance that I get either a regular printed ID label to get in, or just a fall back hand written one. That printer surely goes down quite often.

 

[tmrva]

I just received a quote from EPCOM in Texas for the Cadex C7400 system with cups for Kenwood KNB-45 and Vertex FNB-V133Li-UNI series. There's a long lead time, but I was impressed (no pun intended) with their price.

 

[PACNWDude]

Nice setup. Seems like you have been in business with these a good while.
You wouldn't by any chance have any older battery adaptors like for CP185/EP350, or CP200d/EP450 radios that you don't need anymore? Also looking for an adapter for XPR3/7 radios, but I know those will probably still widely be in use to this day.

BTW I contacted the Cadex representative for Florida (mancetech.com) listed on their website, but they don't have -anything at all- Cadex in stock, they would just have any order drop shipped from Canada, or send people to go directly to the Cadex website to place their order. At least the guy that contacted me was quite nice and helpful.

So I ended up ordering the replacement adapter pins directly from Cadex by using a VPN that gives me a US based IP but its been almost a week and my order still has not been shipped even tough I got a confirmation email for my order indicating it would be shipped 8/11, and besides had to pay for expensive Fedex shipping as they would not provide any alternate shipping method even for such a small item and still take at least a week just to get the order out the door.

No luck on those older adapters. My predecessor got rid of the CP200 cups, and we never used the other model. We also removed any cup adapter that was for Nickle Metal Hydride or NiCad a while back as well. Lithium Ion all the way. Even for EX500/600XLS and HT series batteries.

 

[PACNWDude]

I just received a quote from EPCOM in Texas for the Cadex C7400 system with cups for Kenwood KNB-45 and Vertex FNB-V133Li-UNI series. There's a long lead time, but I was impressed (no pun intended) with their price.

Yes, price wise, they have not gouged with inflation and kept increases reasonable. My only issue is I ordered more APX6/7/8000 series cup adapters and they shipped them two states away.....and still awaiting them to get turned back to the correct site (has been three months and still no new adapters.....using 12 I already had but need more).

 

[tropiradio]

Yes, price wise, they have not gouged with inflation and kept increases reasonable. My only issue is I ordered more APX6/7/8000 series cup adapters and they shipped them two states away.....and still awaiting them to get turned back to the correct site (has been three months and still no new adapters.....using 12 I already had but need more).

My only experience with Cadex was that their shipping department is a mess. My order sat for several weeks even way after it was ready to be shipped until finally after several emails someone came back to me apologizing and saying it was an "unacceptable delay" ... bla bla bla. And all this after they made me pay for $35 Fedex shipping (no other option to ship to the US) just for a $30 purchase of 10 tiny replacement pins for the RigidArm adapters.

 

[tropiradio]

No luck on those older adapters. My predecessor got rid of the CP200 cups, and we never used the other model. We also removed any cup adapter that was for Nickle Metal Hydride or NiCad a while back as well. Lithium Ion all the way. Even for EX500/600XLS and HT series batteries.

Ok thanks anyway, and yes Li-Ion all the way here as well that is the way forward. As a matter of fact it has been quite a few years since one time I had to buy NiMH from Moto because there where no Li available in stock at the time. It was also then when I realized how much weight savings a HNN9013 provides over the HNN9008 NiMH. And NiCD is definitively way too 20th century.