Battery Charging Question

[ROM 1]

What's up vapers? I have a question regarding charging 18350 batteries. I recently purchased a pair of UltraFire 18350 3.7V 1200mAh Rechargeable Li-ion batteries and also a pair of Efest 18350 IMR batteries. Both brands didn't come with instuctions on the time it takes to charge them. The charger I'm using is a cheap, Single Channel 18650 / 18350 Battery Charger, also bought from Fast Tech. The charger has an led on the front, which I believe is an indicator light stating the status of the battery being charged. Red means charging and green meaning fully charged. Eventually, I will buy a better charger and also better batteries in the future, but in the meantime, what I purchased will just have to do. My question is, approximately how long does it take to charge a single 18350 battery? Here are the specs for the charger:

Power & Batteries
Current Output	0.5 A
Input Type	AC 100-240V
Maximum Supported Battery Length	69 mm
Output Type	DC 3.7V

 

[Choc_Addic]

Charging Lithium-Ion Batteries

 

[WarHawk-AVG]

also depending on the "storage capacity" AKA the mAh and the output of the charger depends on how fast it fills the tank

Bigger batteries will take longer...above chart shows 1A or 1000mA...yours pushing at 500mA expect it to take longer

 

[Ryedan]

What's up vapers? I have a question regarding charging 18350 batteries. I recently purchased a pair of UltraFire 18350 3.7V 1200mAh Rechargeable Li-ion Batteries and also a pair of Efest 18350 IMR batteries. Both brands didn't come with instuctions on the time it takes to charge them. The charger I'm using is a cheap, Single Channel 18650 / 18350 Battery Charger, also bought from Fast Tech. The charger has an led on the front, which I believe is an indicator light stating the status of the battery being charged. Red means charging and green meaning fully charged. Eventually, I will buy a better charger and also better batteries in the future, but in the meantime, what I purchased will just have to do. My question is, approximately how long does it take to charge a single 18350 battery?

If you completely discharge a 1200 mAh battery (not a good thing to do) and charge at 1200mA, it will take 1 hour plus a bit to completely charge. If you charge at 600 mA, it will take 2 hours plus a bit to charge. The 'plus a bit' is for the saturation charge to complete.

So the variables are the charge rate of the charger (sometimes changes if you have 2 batts in there instead of just one), the amount of battery charge that needs to be put into the battery and the time required to complete the saturation charge.

Also, faster is not good. I try not to charge at a rate that charges reasonably depleted battery quicker than 2 hours.

 

[ROM 1]

Thanks for the great info...I really appreciate the quick response.

 

[enbuzen]

I'm also using Efest IMR 18350 and 18650 batteries. Good info and pretty much the reason I decided to go with the Nitecore charger. $20 on Amazon and has true auto-shutoff when fully charged which came out to 4.15V measured on a multimeter.

 

[Paul.K]

I have the same charger and it fried one of my 18350 batteries. It also never really charged my batteries well. I just got the Nitecore i2 from amazon and wow what a difference. My Vamo V2 seems to fire correctly now.

Amazon.com: Nitecore i2 Intellicharge Charger for 18650 AAA AA Li-Ion/NiMH Battery: Home Improvement