New charger
 

I need help in deciding what brand of charger to purchase. I have decided to charge my packs now as two 5 cell packs in lieu of 10s packs. I have a Thunder Power 1430c and a icharger 3010B and several power supplies. The Thunder power, according to TP Service says I need to recalibrate the 1430C. Now, I don't want to make this complicated, but I would like to charge at least 4 (5s) at a time, does not have to be really fast but an hour should be long enough. Help?

Revolectrix/FMA Powerlab 6 or Powerlab 8 with their MPA parallel adapter would do what you want
For extra credit, you could add their new Bump controller (RFID tag on battery, reader on charger, makes setup foolproof and also keeps track of battery)

Very good suppport out of MD, accurate and safe.

Thank you for your suggestions. I'll take a look.

I agree 100 percent. I've been using one for the past 18 months and can't find anything more I would want in a charger.
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2198208 http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2198209 http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2198210 http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2198212

I have used the Powerlab 8 with MPA board. I have tried 6, 4 and 2 5s packs in parallel. Sometimes the packs would charge and balance well while at other times the packs would be badly out of balance. I even got a second MPA but that made no difference. I have tried Zippy and Dualsky packs and both produce the same random unbalanced result. I would get packs coming off the charger at 99% with others at say 86%. The low pack would have one low cell and it would take several hours to rebalance the pack. I have parallel charged 6s packs with no problem so I'm not sure why I had problems with the 5s. Maybe it is just a matter of averages. One cell of a 5s is 20% while it is 16.6% for a 6 cell. So the 6s packs may not have been that well balance either but a low cell is not contributing as much the overall final voltage and I have probably willing to accept a pack at 96% of the charger. While in theory parallel charging should work in practice it doesn't seem to. I now have a iCharger 4010 Duo and a 3010B. Both are great chargers and I can charge three 10s packs at once without having to worry about unbalanced packs. I would stay away from parallel charging and stick to series charging.

I use the 3 FMA 10XP and charge either as 2 5S or one 10S on each one and Love it. It take 30-45 min from 20% to 100% charge. And in 2-3 hours I can charge enough batteries to fly most the day at the field

I tried a parallel board and I could do more batteries at one time, however I have had cells go bad on me in flight and so now I am anal about getting the IR for each cell, so I can monitor battery performance and check for cells going bad.

Thank you for your suggestions, pictures are very helpful.

You both make good points on the pros and cons of each option. The beauty of the parallel board is just that, it's an option. When I'm under the gun I charge 2-3 at a time, when not I normally charge individually and read the data as it uploads to the tablet at the conclusion of the charge.

Thank you for your input, interesting, I have never parallel charged, I know some that do.

Anyone have experience with Cellpro 10xp?

Yes,

I have used the older 12v version and the XP since I switched to electric about 6 yrs ago.

What do you want to know about it?

You can charge a 1-10 cells pack or 2 packs up to 5 cells each. Charge rate is dependent on Voltage and current capacity of your Power Source, but is rated for 50+ amps

It provides individual cell voltage, and IR, and can discharge if you have a load to discharge to.

You can control and program charge rate by C, You can hook up a parallel board.

Probably the definitive charger for 2M Pattern stuff running 10S batteries. You can charge a 10S pretty quickly if needed, the newer XP's can put out up to 600 watts if you can feed 'em 30 VDC and you do not have to separate the packs into a pair of 5S. The guys around here are using them with 24 VDC power supplies and they work great. One other thing is that they are protected against plugging the balance leads into the wrong port as that will produce smoke on the others, the CellPro just tells you there is an error.

I received a survey a few days ago from Revolectix. The survey asked about the interest level in a various charger configurations, bump controller, parallel boards, and integrated cases that would house the charger, similar to my case, only smaller.

Just an FYI

This is my CellPro charge station. It's put together with Progressive RC stuff and includes a Meanwell 24VDC 40A power supply.

Repeated.

I have been using FMA's 10s charger (a predecessor model of 10xp) for over 7 years with great success. The DC power to each 10s charger is a 350w AC-2-DC converter. Three of such converters run in parallel against a single 110v AC. I can charge 3 10s packs in parallel very reliably. Triple redundancy is also a big plus with this setup.


http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2198271http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=2198272

Great information. Thanks

The 3010B has a 30A output if you have a strong enough power supply to feed it. With a parallel board you could charge (4) 5S packs at 1.5C which I have done many times. It runs nice and cold but has a very aggressive balance charge algorithum that annoys my generator. Parallel charging is convenient but not perfect as others have pointed out. I only do it with well known packs that are fairly new and reasonably matched. Mainly charge with my Cellpro 10S (250W version) or with Cellpro 10XP (600W) only 15A output and a lot noisier. Decent chargers but I blew up one 10S by connecting it to 24v power supply and the other one is getting a little flaky after many years of use. Replaced the cheap fans in the 10XP and have lots of time on them. Prefer to wire my stuff as 10S much simpler and reduce over an ounce of wire.

Thanks Bill, very helpful. I have been on the phone with Cellpro and getting information. Thanks again.

That is really helpful information, Anthony. I appreciate it. BTW I use Castle products too.

This is great, I have the same exact power supply. I especially liked the pictures, helps me look at the configuration. Thanks a lot.

Thanks for the info and taking time to answer. Information was very helpful.

I just received a coupon from Revolectrix worth 10-15 percent off, if it helps.


http://www.revolectrix.com/new_appli...NGS_2017.1.jpg
http://www.revolectrix.com/new_appli...NGS_2017.2.jpg

thank you sir very much

I hope it helps.