hobiecatlob

Hello,

Two questions:

1. I have a Piranha digital peak charger. I use it with my SuperCub which has a Ni-MH 8.4V 1000 mAh battery. I have been charging it at a 1.0 amp current. Would it be safe to charge it at a higher current to speed up the charging time or would that be dangerous?

2. I also have a Celectra 1-3charger. Here is a link to it: http://www.horizonhobby.com/ProdInfo...r811manual.pdf

Is this Celectra just a charger or a charger AND balancer? I though when I bought it that it was a balancer as well but now I am unsure.

Thanks in advance!!

Chocks_Away

Hiya.

1: stick to charging at no more than the charge rate your at, it will only make your battery knackered faster.

Charging it at 1000mah will get it pretty hot as it is, and will only take around an hour from totally flat.

If charging time is an issue, you would probably be better off buying a second pack to use while the other is charging, or just to use straight after the first pack to extend your flight times



2: That charger is just a charger, it does not balance.
To balance your lipo cells, you need a seperate balancer that matches the multi plug on the lipo pack.
The balancer then sits between the charger and battery, and monitors each individual cell whilst charging it to make sure all the cells are at the same voltage throughout the charge.

hope this helps.
Regards, Craig.

hobiecatlob

1. Thanks for the advice. For future reference, how do I know the suggested charging current for a particular battery? Is there a calculation or something?

2. Thanks for the info!

Chocks_Away

Hi, your most welcome

You can work out the maximum charging rate by any batteries given capacity.

If your battery pack is 1000 mah, then charge it at no more than 1 amp or 1000 mah

2000 mah battery - at no more than 2 amps or 2000mah

500 mah battery - at no more than 0.5 amps or 500 mah

easy [sm=thumbup.gif]

overnight / slow charge is 1/10 of the capacity, so for a 1000 mah battery - 100mah

Slow charging is always the better option, but not always practical.

j stumbler

Check out this site for some very good info on charging. In fact, if you have the time, give the whole site a good once over. It has tons of great info on batteries.
[link=http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone.htm]Batteryuniversity.com[/link]

Enjoy your reading,
Al
[link=http://www.commonsenserc.com]www.CommonSenseRC.com[/link]

hobiecatlob

My Piranha digital peak charge takes about 40 minutes to charge my Ni-MH 8.4V 1000 mAh battery at 1.0 amp. Does this seems right? That seems slow to me as that was the same amount of time that battery took with the cheap charger that came with the kit.

It seems a much more sophisticated charge such as the Piranha should it faster....

Any advice?

Thanks.

Fliprob17

That sounds about right. I am charging 1000 and 1100mah NiMh's at 1.0 and 1.1 amps respectively, and I am right around 40-43 minutes. NiMh's really are not that fragile. You can up the charge rate if you absolutely have to. But you will suffer a little bit of battery life and full charge capacity of the pack. I have charged these packs at up to 3 amps. Not recommended, but it didn't blow up To take care of your packs, keep it around the 1 amp rate.