TrustFire TR-006 Li-Ion battery charger

To work out 1C = 1 x the capacity (mAh) % 1000

Mine came in from MF today. My first impression is that TF brought the quality up a notch on this one. It came packed in retail clamshell packaging and included a product detail card with specs and instructions written in better English than I’m used to seeing from TF. The charger housing is kind of a rubberized plastic with the multicolored TF logo printed right on it. Overall, the look and feel is of higher quality than the UltraFire WF188, which I think is its closest competition. This one boasts a faster charge rate, but the UF-WF188 can accommodate 32mm wide cells (D-sized), so each has its advantage.

I dropped in a pair of LiMn 26650 cells that had open voltage of 4.09V and the lights went from red to green in just a few minutes. At first sign of green, the battery open voltage tested at 4.14V and 4.15V. Next test is on a pair of A123 18650 LiFePO4 cells. I notice that this charger shares the same complication as the TR005, which is that the negative contact protrusion is well placed for 26mm diameter cells, but for 18650 with narrow shrink wrap windows, the contact lands on the shrink wrap edge when the cell is laid flat. You must prop up the neg. end of the cell somewhat for it to make contact.

I am also observing that during charging of the A123 cells with the charger switch set to 3.0V, the red charge indicator lights are pulsing rapidly. I assume this is normal operation. Note that there was no pulsing observed when charging the IMR cells in 4.2V mode.

So for charging 26650 and 18650 we leave it on 4.2V right???
What is the 3.0V for?

26650 and 18650 are merely cell dimensions. The 4.2/3.0V switch allows you to specify what chemistry of cell you are charging. Use the 4.2V setting for conventional LiCo chemistry and IMR chem cells, and use the 3.0V setting for LiFePO4 chem cells, sometimes called “nano phosphate” cells. Both chemistries are available in both sizes.

I just received four of these chargers, and three of them were bad right out of the box! I e-mailed the seller on ebay and they said:

“hi,friend,
please don’t worry,we will do our best to help you.

we do check to it before sending out.
they are all on.
whether the line can not connect the power well?
please check it.

there were some chargers returned before,and we checked them again,it is ok.
if not work well,would you mind returning them back to us.
we will check and replace them to you,OK?

regards,

- rabbitword88”

I’ve tested everything. The one good charger, I unplug the cord from the back of it, try it in the other three, no juice. When I take any of the other three cords and plug them into the working charger, boom, lights right up!

I may just open them up and see WTF is going on. The cost to ship three of them back to china is $44USD :frowning:

-Jamie M.

>>>>>>>I just received four of these chargers, and three of them were bad right out of the box!

I just got one a couple weeks ago and it’s deader than a door nail. No lights. Nothing. Looks like this charger is an avoid.

I popped the covers and looked inside yesterday to see if it was something simple, an unsoldered connection or something. No such luck. Nothing obviously bad inside. In fact, I was quite surpised that there were so many components inside. Soldering was neat and well-done. Must be a bad component or two.

Here’re the innards of my DOA TR-006. Maybe someone will say: “See that cap numbered 897? A coat of nail polish will fix it.”

Red wires go to the charging rails. Nothing amiss that I can see, although the only thing that I could ID would be a disconnected wire or something equally obvious.

I’ve seen some REALLY sloppy and cheap Chinese PCBs, but this looks pretty neat and well done, although not well done enough to make the thing work. :wink:

Because of your nice work so far, I will disassemble my working AND non-working TR-006 and use my multimeter to determine where the two units start to differ :slight_smile:

Pics and info shortly.

-Jamie M.

Here is my working one:

I appear to be missing the “LED Holder” that’s in your pic:

And I’m pretty sure those aren’t supposed to be touching, and it looks a little different than your pic (the black thing with the copper wound wire).

Gonna rip apart the non-working one and take a look see :slight_smile:

-Jamie M.

Ok, so the first place where I can find any problems starting from the 120ac input is at C10 to the bottom of C19. The good one is 2.5v DC and the bad one is 0.5v DC :frowning:

I’m checking to see of anything “important” got installed upside down with the rest of the upside down resistors, lol.

-Jamie M.

Well, the one not working is now totally fried. I was testing voltages around R3/R6 and the probe must have touched something it shouldn’t, sparks, smoke, doesn’t smell good. Now I don’t have power where I used to have power :frowning:

I filed a paypal dispute and like 20 mins later the seller agreed to ship me two new chargers free of charge (pre-tested ones, lol).

So I’ll only be short one charger, I guess that’s OK :frowning:

Good luck on your repair.

-Jamie M.

Thanks for trying to help! That was above and beyond the call. I got my money back no problem on the broken one. I always go with ebay sellers with ultra-high feedback, even if their products are a little more money. I told him the charger was DOA and he refunded my money in the next e-mail. Never asked me to send it back.

Thanks again. Sorry your charger burned up. That’s awful. That was the good one right? That’s why I don’t poke around with a DMM. I would have fried something in the first seconds. Thanks for trying.

I have one of these chargers also. Mine was from Manafont.The ac to dc power supply is dead.The charger does work fine with a direct dc input.I have checked all the solder joints and tryed tracing the a/c side but just got a headache.I could return it the MF but probably won’t bother…I’ll just use it w/5 amp 12v supply I already have.Supprised to see there have been others with the same problems with this charger…probably best to avoid it!-Rick

>>>>>probably best to avoid it!-Rick .

Now that you too have a broken one, I’d say it’s a definite avoid. Too bad. Was a nice-looking charger with okay specs, but after all this bad press, I won’t get within 10 feet of another one.

My temporary solution, I would like to have a 26650 charger though.

The seller agreed to send me two more chargers for free, to replace the three bad ones I got, so I’d be only short one charger.

Guess what, the two chargers they sent me are totally dead as well.

What the heck is going on? I specifically asked them to test the chargers before they sent them to me :frowning:

-Jamie M.

>>>>>> I specifically asked them to test the chargers before they sent them to me

Well, I suppose they could have tested them and they could work on 240/220 and not 120? But that seems unlikely.

Man, you’d think after getting burned once, they’d check the chargers before shipping.

The charger boards from the following thread can be had for $1.78 with free shipping, solder one or two inside the bad chargers.

Wow, good timing! I just heard from two friends the exact same thing! They shipped them back to china, tested on 240v, BOOM! Work perfect!!!

Looks like there could be a defect in the 110/220 voltage setup in the charger :frowning:

-Jamie M.

I hope that’s the reason why. I just ordered one from lightmalls, and I did not stumble upon this thread until later.
Australia uses 220-230v AC so it should work