Battery Charger question

[Jeremy386]

Hey There,

I've been using some UltraFire Protected 16340's for my GLV.

I was wondering if there is any reason I couldn't/shouldn't use my RC Car Battery Charger to charge them. I've got one of these, DuraTrax® IntelliPeak ICE Charger | 88X that I haven't used in a few years and it is a same that it is just collecting Dust.

Thanks for you input.

Jeremy

 

[new2vap]

I read the specs on the charger listed and it looks like it should work just fine.

 

[mdocod]

Hi Jeremy,

Just make sure not to exceed the maximum safe charging current for the cell/s. Best way to charge the cells is actually going to be to wire them up in parallel and set the charger to treat it as a single cell with a termination voltage of 4.20V. Charge current will be split between the 2 cells equally through the charge so double the charge rate that would normally be used for a single cell. (I would suggest no more than ~450mA charge rate per cell, 900mA for the pair total). Parallel charging ensures perfect cell balancing with less hassle (no balance taps etc).

In all likelihood, unless you are using a Pila IBC for your current charging, moving over to using the hobby charger could potentially be safer, since most consumer oriented cradle chargers lack proper charger termination.

I would personally suggest against using lithium cobalt chemistry cells of such small capacity in any PV, and suggest against the ultrafire brand for cells entirely, but that's a different issue all together.

Eric