What chargers for Lipo's

[Steve McDonald]

Just wondering what you guys are using to charge your lipos? There are countless new high powered chargers on the market and I had thought about the iCharger 206B but they are like hens teeth. Any suggestions?

Cheers

Steve

[Robert Mahoney]

Hi Steve, How many cells are you going the charge at once? I now use Thunder Power, there new charger has two outputs and you can update it!

Buy cheap, pay twice.

regards Robert Mahoney

[Steve McDonald]

Robert,

6s packs are as big as I see myself going! I'll have a look at the Thunder Power units.

Cheers

Steve

[Andy Boylett]

Between myself and my son Sam we have 64 3 cell 5000mah packs and probably another 40 smaller packs......all HobbyKing, Tunrigy or Tunrnigy NanoTech.

We find that choice of charger depend son how you wnat to fly. We have enough batteries to onnly need to charge them at 1c rates. The 5000mah packs will charge at 4.2 amps on the standard 50w chargers (4.2 x 11.1 + 50w) hence taking about an hour for a 70% discharged pack. This charge rate of 4.2amps is just under the 1c rate is very 'nice' to th epacks and they have long lives - we are still using packs well over 2 years old.We have 5 of the cheap 6 cell chargers connected to 2 large batteries, all mounted in a trailer that travels to the flying field with us.

We also have a selection of high powered chargers. Virtually all of these need more than 12volt power supplies. Our Fusion LR706 will do 2 packs at 20amps each and is obviously much quicker, however you need a big power supply for this - either 24volt batteries or a 600watt DC mains power. We also have 400watt, 200watt and 150watt HobbyKing Turnigy chargers. We have these monuted individually in transmitter style cases with 18volt mains power supplies. Each case has one charger plus 2 of the 18volt, 10 amp mains supplies in it. The outputs of the mains 18v DC supplies are connectd via high power diodes so that they cannot interfere with each other. We use these at model shows when it easier to take batteries back to our caravan for charging and run them off the generator.

Here are the links to these chargers:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__17753__Turnigy_Mega_200Wx2_Battery_charger_discharger_400w_.html

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__11340__TURNIGY_MEGA_400W_Lithium_Polymer_Battery_Charger.html

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__7523__Turnigy_Accucel_8_150W_7A_Balancer_Charger.html

And just for completeness...our favourite charger was this one
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__16390__HobbyKing_3S_4_Channel_Balance_Charger.html
This can charge 4 x 3cell pack all at once and it is so simple to use. Just connect the ballance lead and everything else is automatic. The only problem is that turned out to ba a problem with these chargers and they do not work without at least 15.5volt input voltage.

Regards, Andy

[chris_bell]

We have 2 of these use them on 5S 5000MAH's and some 3s 2200 for the models - one is 14 months old one 3 months - both great value.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor ... arger.html


Chris