Ive just finished building my 12v 3800mah battery from 1.2v sub-c cells but the instructions with this charger are a bit confusing. anyone know what they are doing with one of these? the help would be much appreciated!
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Ive just finished building my 12v 3800mah battery from 1.2v sub-c cells but the instructions with this charger are a bit confusing. anyone know what they are doing with one of these? the help would be much appreciated!
Ok, I can help you out with this: For basic charging, do as follows:
You should have a screen that has battery type, number of cells and amp rating. Press 'Setup', and Battery type should start flashing. Press up and down to select battery chemistry, and press setup again to move to the next one and change that to suit.
Press down, and you should have a screen marked charge mode. The details you put in before should be there. Press setup again, and you can select the rate of charge, and press setup again to exit. Once you have the battery details and charge rate done, connect the battery and hit enter, and charge mode will start. It'll beep when its done.
im using the automatic settings at the mo to go through a few cycles.
dave, dont suppose you could tell me the settings i need to input for a 12v 3800Mah 12 cell battery? i just cant get along with the thing!
Hey Dan
The description in my first post should have produced the desired result and have your settings ready for charge, Whats the problem exactly ? Drop me an e-mail and I can probably talk it over on the phone or something if you are having problems still.
i got most of it. what charge and discharge rates do i need for it?
I charge my 3300mA packs on a fast charge of 3A, but for a slow charge, anywhere between 1.5-2A. for a 3800mA pack, 3A will be a good quick charge rate. As for discharge rate, I've never actually done it to my own batteries, but I wouldn't discharge them at more than 2A.
whats the 5mV/C bit on the charge screen? and im guessing the ....V/cell means the voltage of each cell (being 1.2v)?
I beleive thats to what tolerance you want each cell charged at. I've never changed it, and not had any problems, so :)
ok, ill have a go. im using 16 swg wire, that ok? sorry about all the questions, im ok with the mechanical engineering side but electronics is not exactly my speciality!
just finished charging but it finished at 2300mAh and the voltage dropped rapidly once the charging had finished? is the battery no good?
No it does that, the battery voltage is high as its putting the current in, the voltage levels out at near its stated voltage afterwards (my 18v pack usually peaks at 24v but after the beep reads about 19.5v.
how about the capacity? it seems to lack 1500mAh?!
I think thats probably telling you how much its put into it to make it funny charged, the packs had charge in them already
problem. the charger was charging and discharging the battery fine but recently when charging in Nimh automatic mode (which is what ive always used) its stopping charging for no reason and making no noise to say theres been an issue? my power supply is 3amps and at times, the charger can draw up to 3.5 amps from it so my guess is that the power supply is momentarily tripping out and stopping the charge?
lower the charge rate to the nicad so you only use 3 amps from the supply ,
hi dave ! :)
Tried that. It's saying that the output voltage is too low?
That could well be the cause, I've had it happen when a fuse went on a power supply not rated for use with the pro-peak
got it all sorted now. made a stupid mistake on the settings! 12c should have been 10c! thank you all for your help!
Updated the battery to 16.8v nimh 4300mah but it's doing the same thing again! Discharge is fine but on the charge, the charger is turning off and on therefore cancelling the charge. It's a 14 cell pack so ive changed the 10c bit to 14c but other than that everything else has stayed the same (4300mah, 3amps max charge and 5m/vc or whatever that bit is!)
Thanks
Dan
And on the discharge, the battery voltage is dropping below 16.8v?! But that's on the nimh automatic setting rather than a custom setting
any help on this would be great! im tearing my hair out here. its reaching a peak of around 18.5v then the charger is cutting out. its discharging down to 16.6v approx. weirdly, the fan is staying on during charging which it has never done before?!
on my constellation the fan is constantly on when charging a high cell'd pack like my 24v and isn't on at all when charging my 6v (when charging both at the same aperage)
I really can't work out?! If I can't get it working, I'll have to bring it down to Guildford for some help
i'll have a look at it at guilford if you want but i'm by no means an expert, i've only been using the constellation for about 2 months now
Thank you. I'm sure it's only something simple but I can't work it out at all!
is the charger screen turning off or is it the 13.8v supply turning off to the charger ?Quote:
Originally Posted by Danjr1
what supply is it ?
The supply is a maplins 12v 3a supply. Never had any problems with it. Another weird thing it's doing is that I set the limit to 3a during charging but it creeps up to 3.01a. Couple of minutes later it turns off but it never went above 3a when charging the 12v battery. I've separated the packs now and am cycling them and I've had no issues at all?!
In the past ive had problems with supplies dropping the output voltage a bit low so the constallation charger cuts out,
normally due to cheap supplies !. All of my constallation chargers charge a bit more than you ask it to never worked out why. you said you have now seperated your packs to charge and they are now ok, how long were they charging for ? im wondering if the supply was getting too hot ?
Say 20 minutes? I'm charging the 4300mah 4.8v pack now and it's currently on 4360mah and rising......
It's just stopped at 4431mah at approx 6v so that pack is fine
Both the 12v and 4.8v packs are accepting the charge and discharge fine to within 200mah of each other so it ain't the batteries?
All sorted! Thank you all for ur help
What does TRK mean in the top left hand corner once it's finished charging?
trickle charge (slow charge just to keep it topped up)
Weird. It charged to half it's capacity then Switched into that mode. It's never done that before
Probably means the battery was already half-charged. I don't know if it's the same with all chargers (only recently got into fancy chargers) but it'll put in as much as there is room for and then trickle or stop the charge. This provides a good indication of how much has been drawn out of your batteries in a battle.
For example, if you have a 3000mAh battery and it only charges to, say, 1000mAh after a fight, that's how much you took out of it in that fight. So your battery still had two-thirds of its capacity remaining.
At least I think that's how it works...