I have a Radnor helmet with solar battery power. It's probably ten or twelve years old... I don't use it all that much anymore. Trouble is my helmet acts like it's not turned on. Adjustments make no difference. I wonder do the batteries in these things go bad over time and need replacement?
I looked it over from both sides. I don't see where anything comes apart to expose a battery. I think maybe I should just take it back where I bought it and see if someone there can straighten me out.
If they take it back after 10 or 12 years of use, infrequent or not, give them all your business when it comes to welding supplies!
Some auto darkening helmets, particularly the older ones, and the cheaper ones, do not have interchangeable or field replaceable batteries. The cheapest Harbor Freight auto darkening helmets do not have user replaceable batteries. They are throw away helmets. Harbor Freight does sell one helmet that has a user replaceable lithium battery (a button cell watch battery commonly available at any drugstore or supermarket), but that model helmet (branded as "Vulcan") costs 5 times more than HF's $39.00 on sale loss leader auto darkening helmet.
Some older design solar charged auto darkening helmets from high end brands such as Optrel, from Switzerland, who introduced the "Solarmatic" to the welding industry in the mid 1980's, also did not have user replaceable batteries. Some designs permitted replacement of the entire auto darkening cartridge, but by the time one priced out a replacement cartridge, buying an entire new helmet with refreshed head gear and a better shell design made a lot more "cents". Again, throw away helmet.
Your Radnor helmet is both older, and cheaper. Radnor is a "house brand" of Airgas, created in the late 1990's when Airgas bought IPCO and Lyons Safety, and created their own brand name to get supplies cheaper. Much of Radnor is made in China, whether it is gas cups or welding helmets. An older, "value oriented", imported helmet is not likely worth saving, unless you can A) replace the cartridge with one that fits, provided that B) a cartridge is still available that fits in that old of a helmet, or C) the helmet is sized to received an industry standard dimensioned auto darkening cartridge model, presuming that D) the cost of the cartridge is reasonable and lower than the cost of an entire new helmet.
Your cartridge is done. Like any battery that isn't maintained with frequent recharging, it self discharges to the point where it will no longer accept a charge. You said that you didn't use your helmet all that much, which means that the solar cell charger didn't see enough UV arc light to generate charging voltage. Unless you hang your ADF helmets outside facing the southern sky for full sun exposure (I've done this), the built in, captive battery inside will eventually self discharge irrecoverably, lacking use from arc time. And even used every night, and hung in the sun every day, there are only so many charging cycles a battery can endure before breaking down, and your built in battery is more than a decade old.
Get a new helmet. A model with a user replaceable battery, and a provision for inserting cheater lenses to assist with your diminishing eyesite. And do report back if the store where you bought your old one from actually takes it back and refunds your money or credits you the difference. That would make a fun story to tell. Otherwise, I save parts from old helmets, and mix and match these salvaged parts to make hybrid helmets with the head gear from this one attached to the shell of that one combined with the bib of the other one, and put in a new gold filter for the lens, etc.
