TOPIC:

stingray-63 wrote:

Jonny, I need a second lipo charger. I saw on the bay several I max be at various prices. Is it a good charger? I need it for 3 sticks(for thé slash) and small 2s sticks. (Like rx aqs)
Thanks

It's good, but there are a lot of settings, which can make it difficult to set up. 5 Amp maximum charge rate is ok, but the maximum discharge rate 1 Amp means Lipo storage (Dis)charges can take a long time on large capacity packs, like three hours to half discharge a full 4000mAH pack.

There are a lot of fakes out there too - they cost a little bit less or often the same, they look very similar but have poorer quality components and may not stop charging quite as quickly as they should.

The easy things to look for are:

Genuine: Blue cardboard box, square holo decal on underside, gold plates 4mm outputs
Fake or "Clone": Black box, no holo decal, nickle/chrome outputs.

For instance, these two look genuine to me:






Whereas these look suspect

Here is a video on how to spot a genuine/fake and to calibrate an Imax B6 charger:

Thanks a lot guys. That helps me.

[quote="Jonny Retro" post=36983






[/quote]
ordered. Thanks Jonny

Lipo batteries get the dramatic headlines - but can I remind everyone that NiMH packs are also potentially dangerous & need supervision when charging too.

The bulge in this 3300mAh 7.2v NiMH pack happend this morning while I was charging it at 1C - some sort of internal failure has caused it to outgas, & that hot gas has heated & inflated the heatshrink tube. As it is it's no big deal, but left unchecked it could have been nasty

sad!
But I think that every accumulator type are dangerous. Same a classic nicd or lead battery. A short circuit and boooom.

Isn't charging NiMH at 1C pushing the limits ?

i use a 40 dollar full setup.

20 dollar - nitecore d2 charger.

10 dollar each - 18650 li-mn 20c rated - 3400mah - 4.2v fully charged battery.

----
requires soldering gun and sheilded bullet connectors and wire
----
great diy performance for budget. normal charging happens in the 2 slots at 4.2v so the batteries are simply soldered/wired/bullet connectors at both ends aswell then placed in the car and wired in series.
the charger requires the batteries fully disconnected and charged independantly.

- my tamiya fb has a "m" style battery tray so the 18650 batterys fit perfectly. i just remove the batteries and place them in the charger like normal.
--
WORKS AWESOME! I WENT FROM A 330G BATTERY TO A 100G BATTERY WITH EQAUL POWER AND 50 PERCENT INVESTMENT COST AND UPKEEP.

larbut wrote:

Isn't charging NiMH at 1C pushing the limits ?

Well I didn't think so - but that was more based on the chargers I've used & practices of the times. For instance, when i first started in RC 1000/1100/1200mAh Ni-Cds were the norm, and the most widely used fast charger was the 15 minute timed Acoms charger, 4C didn't seem to do any harm, certainly less than racers trying to get the absolutes last erg into their packs...

Fast forward to later experiences, 3000mAh NiMH packs & the most used charger was some variety of the Pro-Peak 2500, run at 3A on mains power (so 1C, or less as pack capacities increased) or 5A when running off 12v supplies (so 5/3 C {or 1.6 recurring C}). Those were all -ve delta V chargers (detecting the tiny voltage drop just before full charge), or "varipulse" which supposedly did something fancy, getting a little bit closer to a full charge.

I'm saying it was right, but if the equipment let you charge NiMH packs at 1C to 5/3C, and NiMH batteries were _so_ much better than Ni-Cds (which were fine on 4C), then 1C to 5/3C must be fine too?

My problem with "current thinking" on charge rates inevitably means looking it up on the internet, and the phrase "echo chamber of misinformation" definitely applies here - I didn't spend that long looking because it quickly became apparent that the pages I looked at all seemed to be paraphrasing a Wikipdia page - which cites a _commercial_ page with no scientific rigour as its primary source - so I won't be changing my practices based on anything I've read yet

On a practical level though, given that I've got two chargers and a fairly small number of NiMH packs now, reducing to C/2 (or 0.5C) would mean I could still get them all done in a day.

As a footnote, I'll mention that they're Imax B6 4-button chargers, and they don't charge at a set amperage through the cycle - I set them to 1C max charge rate (e.g. 3.3A max for a 3300mAh pack) but rarely see that figure during charging, especially near the end.

sublunacy wrote:

i use a 40 dollar full setup.

20 dollar - nitecore d2 charger.

10 dollar each - 18650 li-mn 20c rated - 3400mah - 4.2v fully charged battery.

----
requires soldering gun and sheilded bullet connectors and wire
----
great diy performance for budget. normal charging happens in the 2 slots at 4.2v so the batteries are simply soldered/wired/bullet connectors at both ends aswell then placed in the car and wired in series.
the charger requires the batteries fully disconnected and charged independantly.

- my tamiya fb has a "m" style battery tray so the 18650 batterys fit perfectly. i just remove the batteries and place them in the charger like normal.
--
WORKS AWESOME! I WENT FROM A 330G BATTERY TO A 100G BATTERY WITH EQAUL POWER AND 50 PERCENT INVESTMENT COST AND UPKEEP.