With all the new battery chargers out these days I was glad to finally get a littokala and an opus to charge and test cells without having to buy a hobby charger .
NOW I picked up A Traxxas RC truck for super cheap and hate to think about having to buy a hobby charger.
I bought a new 3000mah 7.2v nimh 10c from Hobby King with 6 Sub C’s in it and suddenly thought hey wait a minute …I have a couple of makita drill chargers that will charge 7.2V / 9.6V amd 12volt batteries .
One is 1.5 amps and the second one charges at 2 amps …
Any ideas or opinions ?
any opinion on how good or bad a fake B6 clone really is ? they are like 16$ on ebay at this point .
IMO they are good enough, had one fail on me, but that was just an badly soldered inductor.
They do have their problems with accuracy of voltage and current measurement, but I’ve yet have to read that they were to blame for putting a cell in a dangerous state.
Don’t charge batteries in Series without balancing them, never charge batteries with an unsuited charger.
NEVER
This guy charges Dewalt batteries with a hobby charger, maybe you could reverse his method and charge RC batteries on your powertool charger. Youtube
I don’t know if makita balance charges, but if you can figure out the connections it shouldn’t be to hard to connect your RC battery to the charger.
But I think you’d be better of with a HobbyCharger.
The fake IMAX B6 vary. Some are just fine, some not so much. They are made from different components and probably in different locations. There is not way to tell until you have it. IMO if you really want a hobby charger it’s worth the $5-10 more to get a real one or an Acucell-6.
Re-series charge and balancing.
The only way you can charge an NiXX pack is in series. There is no way to balance it. Balancing is a function of lithium cells IF they have a balance port, which most RC lipos have.
Didn’t read it was an NiMH battery, so if your makita is NiMH you could probably just hook it up. But they are probably NiCd, I don’t know if there is a difference between charging NiMH and NiCd
Yeah it's a nimh pack .... No balancing . i picked up a ni-cad radio shack charger at the same time and plugged the venom nimh pack that came with the car in it.... couple minutes later i smelled the horrid electrical smell of "OH **** the house is burning down smell " i don;t trust the charger at this point ..pretty lame,pretty old and after having a dead shorted battery pack in it ..i'm skeptical of it .
The nominal of that pack is 7.2v right? You might as well try to power it by a DIY pack of two li-ions, just about the same voltage just for the hang of it.
NiMh and NiCad are similar but not the same. They have somewhat different termination requirements. Some chargers handle that, others don’t. That’s one of the problems with some fake IMAX. You also can SET the termination level on chargers similar to the IMAX design, one of the advantages of that style charger if you understand how to use it. It’s getting so people don’t understand NiXX charging anymore.
