Charging a battery ?

i have a pro peak constelation charger.and im not sure what is the best way to get the most out of my charger.at the moment i use the auto setting for my 12v 3000mah ni-mh which seems to take hours.is it possible to fast charge these batterys or am i best on auto?

yep - go onto manual mode, and look in your user guid on how to set it up. you need to set in in the type of battery, capacity, voltage and desired charge rates.

Thanks for that....but what ARE my desired charge rates ? The battery itself just says charge at 300ma for 14-16 hours. It says nothing about fast charging.

well personally when im not in a rush for charging i always charge at that rate, but for an event if i have time i often charge at around 2000mA, or if im in a real rush charge at around 2600-3000mA. But i wouldnt do this all the time, its good for your batteres to give them a good slow charge every now and then.

Andrew .. Grants advice is of course sound and Im merely posting some additional supportive educational type info for you.

Heres a link to a different make of charger .... but I suspect its essentially the same charging rules.
http://www.modelrectifier.com/resources/BatteryChargers/959HelpfulHints.pdfhttp://www.modelrectifier.com/resour...lpfulHints.pdf
Heres yet another site with suggested charge rates for their 3000mah Nimh batteries.
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXHUJ9&P=Mhttp://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXHUJ9&P=M

Thanks for your advice grant and woody.this fra forum is great! good of you to help me out.:)

Hi guys

Im also having charger trouble. I just put my batteries on for their initial charge, set the battery type (NiMH), set the charge current (300mAh) and the number of cells, I come back an hour later and find the charger says its finished. Explinations ?

Try and keep cycling/charging the cells as they tend to do that quite often when brand new. Once you get them fully charged eventually they go back to normal. James has had alot of trouble with that before.

Dont forget that most batteries are supplied partially or fully charged these days... so putting your battery on charge when new probably wont charge it very much.

I tried cycleing but after about 30 seconds started beeping and it flashed up a warning saying something like Open circuit or something like that, so what gives ?