Disclaimer: I’ll be honest, I haven’t searched the forum but I have been lurking for 4 months or so and I’ve not seen any discussions on this topic.
I’ve got this wonderful R/C charger (http://www.revolectrix.com/GT500_features_tab.htm). I’ve used it for a year or so for my high capacity LiPo r/c batteries and it is amazing. I want to use it for parallel charging my flashlight Li-ions as well. So I’m asking if anyone has come up with a solution for this? I’m picturing a setup with adjustable spring sliders connected in parallel tied into banana plugs to hook up to the charger.
I’m hoping someone can help me find a cheap source of parts or possibly a ready made solution so I don’t have to keep charging one by one or need to fork out more cash for a dedicated charger.
I don’t know of any pre-made slide operated battery bays. Those are pretty much a custom built thing.
I used some 4x 18650 and 26659 battery holders off ebay. I wired them in parallel and can charge 14 18650’s in parallel. It works great but is limited to 18650’s.
The the smaller cells I generally just use a cheap single bay UM10 charger till now but I just ordered a VC2 to take care of that.
For me I simply don’t use enough smaller cells to make it worth the time and effort to gut, then wire and glue together a bunch of sliding trays. Although come to think of it, I do have a few laying around, I might do that just for the heck of it.
If you really want to do that I would get a bunch of cheap wall wart style chargers from ebay, then rip them open and use them just for the battery holder parts.
Thanks a ton for the response. I guess I’ll try to find some 18650 and 26650 4-bay trays and wire ’em up myself. Then I could just make some banana to alligator clips and hook it up that way. This should get me the ability to charge 4 of each size in parallel.
Thats what I did for my setup, I then wired mutiple 4 cell holders together so I could charge even more at once. Just be sure to use thick wire. I think I used 14awg for mine or the voltage drop over the course of the cells will cause issues.
I have used some of those 18650 plastic holders, and these particular ones had a ton of resistance at the connection between the spring and wire. It is like a crimped connection. Also be aware some of the holders are too short to fit protected cells.