Do you have some suggestions for the new vapcell charger?

My personal opinion is that supporting 18650-26800 is perfectly fine. There are plenty of other chargers suitable for smaller sizes but very few for larger sizes.

I think one mistake manufacturers make is that if the charger doesn’t support smaller sizes that it is suddenly going to have no market? Personally I like longer chargers as it makes getting 18650/21700 in and out of the charger easier.

I would like to see the following;

  • 2 or 4 bay charger
  • 3A charging per slot
  • USB-C PD for power input*
  • 18650 - 26800 support (I would say 65mm - ~90mm total length supported)
  • Storage mode (Charges or discharges to ~3.7V)
  • Capacity testing (1A discharge is fine for me)
  • Manually adjustable charging current (Up to 3A)

*I am not overly familiar with the limitations of USB-PD in terms of power delivery but I don’t see why it wouldn’t deliver enough power. Personally I would take a slight charging hit (Maybe a max of 3A x 2 slots or 2A x 4) in order to have USB-PD input.

**I would say if you could include 14500 size batteries that would also help your market. They’re a lot longer than 16340 and I don’t think would require too much additional modification. I would have a lower minimum charging current if supporting 14500 batteries.

By eliminating shorter batteries you can cut costs of manufacturing/R&D as you have said.

Only other feature I can think of that would be nice is if it also had USB output (Either through the same port or another port), but this isn’t a deal breaker.

As TimMC said above the form factor is slowly becoming more common but availability is definitely not the best. I purchased a bulk quantity to sell into my small local market which has worked well and one of the most common question is “Which charger” to which I reply XTAR SC1 Plus as it’s essentially the only good one on the market.

I currently own and use the S4+ daily it’s a great charger all round.
Some folks dont like the full charge bell sound, personally i dont mind it but it isn’t loud enough.
I have some AB cells with USB C on them and i hate them, dont quite fit the S4+, 26800 capability would allow charging any 21700 battery.
I’ll second TimMc request for a storage mode.
Slightly stronger springs as well even though the current ones are ok a bit more tension will help secure smaller cells a bit better eg. 10440/14500.

The charger that I would use a lot is one that analyses all li-ion cells that are inserted correctly, and charges them correctly. So also smaller cells and old cells are analysed and charged correctly. At the same time it must have a good display with as much information as possible simultaneously displayed for all slots (so no toggle-button clicks needed).

It happens too often that I have to insert a cell several times before a charger picks it up correctly. Or the charger declares a half-full cell as full all of a sudden. And then I take it out and insert again and the charger starts charging correctly again. This happened with Soshine chargers, Liitokala chargers and Xtar chargers.

It is nice if the charger is compact and can be USB-C powered. A two-slot charger is what I use most. For me if it charges just li-ion cells that is fine.

Several charge currents are nice, and the option to stop at 80% charged is nice, but these are secondary wishes, the first is that it charges well.

I know exactly what you mean here, i can’t figure out why this happens :rage:

Yes its nice but it would also be a competitive advantage that no one has yet. It would make me buy their charger.

Would it be possible to simply include a couple of spacers for shorter batteries that way the springs only need to support 18650 - 26800?

I’m 100% in favor of the feature list that @Kardel posted:

It will be nice if you can add some identification to your cell (barcode/QR/RFID/etc) and a reader to the charger so we can have history of our cells (num of cycles, capacity, etc.)

power bank mode.

Here are two features I would like to see in future advanced chargers.

1. Display actual charging current
It would be nice if ACTUAL charging current is displayed during charging. For example, when a charger is set to push 2A into a battery, the charging current slowly decreases as the battery fills up. I would like to monitor that information. I find the following information useful in my current charger: voltage, configured charging current, charged capacity in mA, time, internal resistance, and temperature. I would like to see actual charging current in addition to the information listed above.

2. Improved contacts
I would like improved contacts. I like chargers that displays detailed information of charged batteries, especially that displays internal resistance. I understand internal resistance measured in most chargers are inaccurate, but it still is an useful piece of information. However, the internal resistance measured usually depends on the goodness of contact between the charger and batteries. If I squeeze the contacts for better electric connection, I usually get better IR measurements. If the metal contact that are usually used in the chargers are improved, then I think the measurements can be much more reliable.

A charger with 4 point measurement for the IR and a storage mode (3.7V). Battery size from 16340 to 26800. Cell chemistry: Li-Ion, Ni-MH, NiCd and LiFePO4.

Ooh...

Great ideas!

A quad charger that had 2 bays 26800 capable and 2 that were 16340 capable would be cool.

The positive and negative terminals of s4+ charger are designed to better contact the battery

Can this design be continued in the future, or should it be improved? To fit more battery sizes

Is this a storage function or something else

If a Li-Ion cell is charged to about 80%, then the cell will last longer.

When not using a Li-Ion cell for a while, it can better if it's charged to about 80% for storage.

I'm sure Bort can explain it better than I can, though.

Thank you for your suggestion. This kind of battery is more suitable for fast charging of high current batteries instead of small batteries

The higher power of usb-pd is used in the charger. It is expected that there will be some difficulties, mainly in terms of cost, protocol and current distribution

18650 to 26800 works for me. I have plenty of chargers for smaller batteries. I only charge one or two batteries at a time, but a four slot with slot 1 & 4 for 26800 would work too. Storage voltage and 4.0v options would be nice, but not required for me. I can just check the voltage every now and then, lol. I do not like chargers that get really hot. High quality with whatever extras you think will sell best. Thanks for asking.

It could be improved by making the top part of the positive terminal a bit bigger, and by adding a small nipple on that big bit so that flat top 10440 and 14500 cells easily fit.

I managed to short a flat top 14500 cell in my S4+ charger and it left a burn mark on the insulation ring.

I agree that keeping a standard barrel plug (Or whatever is currently used) would be cheaper but I would like to see consolidation of power input ports from manufacturers across industries.

It’s not a deal breaker for me though, just something that’s nice to have. Ultimately you have to decide from a business perspective whether it’s worth pursuing.

Thank you for your support and advice

We will try our best to debug the charger so that the batteries of all sizes are in good contact

Thanks

80% power. Do you mean that the storage function sets 80 power?

Or do you stop charging when charging to about 4.0V in normal use?