I would like a charger that I can charge 8 batteries (18650) or more on at once. I have bought heaps of cheap ebay chargers and they all seem to pack it in after a short time.
I have been reading on here that lots of you guys use the accucell, but from what I can see you only ever charge once battery at once.....am right?
Is it possible to charge multiple cells at once?
I have a few Accucell 6 chargers as I am into the model heli scene (when i get time).
If you already have a few Accucel chargers, why put 8 on one charger? Spread it around some. I don't think it makes sense to charge 8 18650's in series since the further you get away from the ends, the less charge the interior ones will get. That's the whole reason for balance charging rigs.
Personally I don't charge but one battery at a time on my Turnigy. I don't go through batteries any faster than that.
XTAR has the WP6II that does 6 batteries at a time.
Thanks for the reply, Could i theoretically use the balance charge on say 4 or 8 batteries on my accucell chargers?
I do a lot of late night hunting with a freind, Usually this involves 2 X Gun lights (18650), 2 X Head lamps (18650), a spoting torch- (3X XML-T6 - 2X 18650 cells) and a two back up torchs (C8). So thats 8 batteires we usually go through in the fest few hours, then we do a fresh change after that, so its not uncommon for me to go through 20-30 cells in a night. As hunting is nightly occurance some weeks I often only have the next day to charge the batteries up again.
20-30 cells a night! Do you hunt by melting animals with flashlight beams?
A bunch of different batteries charged down to different levels, there's no way I would do but two that both came from the same light off one hobby charger, and only then if you can keep them sorted so you know which two were together. Otherwise you need individual charging channels for each one (though I have heard that parallel charging keeps the cells fairly well balanced).
Yeah it sounds like a lot, but we go out on long treks for 4-5 hours at a time. Also I don't like let my bats run flat as I lose heaps of distance on the beams as soon as they drop past around 60%
At the moment i have heaps of cheap chargers, but they all seem to be dieing one by one. Also Im runnig out of power points! After the last one smoked the kitchen out, my wife is making my charge them in the workshop.
I might try and rig up the balance lead so i can charge the max number of cells the charger can do.
Failing that I think I might buy a bunch of those TR003 chargers if they are any good.
I have a Accucell 6 charger too, never been used. I bought it for my RC car batteries (LiPo) about a year ago but never got around to finishing the car.
I am in no ways any authority on this but I had a similar problem and needed to charge 4 batteries at a time. I am currently using the intellicharge i4 v2 which I like since it also can charge nimh batteries and other sizes of lion batteries. Here my review is. https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/7763
Balanced is the preffered method, parallel is ok if all cells are close in voltage, battery capacity is unimportant as your hobby charger won't charge over 4.2V.
Accucell 6 is a 50W 6A charger, it is important to not exceed that when you are charging your cells.
If you are charging your 3100mAh 3.7V 18650 cells at 1C (3.1A) in series, you can BALANCE charge a maximum 6 cells as per Accucell's spec.
Parallel vs series charging:
Parallel: the charger will treat the 4 cells as one big cell (3.7V) with 4x3100mAh = 12400mAh (12.4Ah) capacity. However, You can't charge this one big cell at 1C (12.4A) since it will exceed the rated output amperage of the charger which is 6A (0.484C). So, if you were to charge it at the maximum rate amperage the charger can put out which is 6A, then it will take you more than 2 hours to charge the 4 cells (12.4Ah divided by 6A = 2.067 hours)
Series (balance): the charger will treat this as 4 individual cells and will charge this at 14.8V (3.7V x 4 cells). If you charge in this configuration at 1C (3.1A) then you will need 45.88 watts of power (14.8V x 3.1A = 45.88 watt) which is VERY close to the charger's limit of 50 Watts.
For charging in series, always balance charge. If you charge multiple cells in series without balancing charge, the charger will see this configuration as 1 big cell (instead of 4x3.7V cells, it will charge it as 1 14.8V cell). In a 4 cells series charging without balancing and if one cell is a dud, the charger will still charge the remaining 3 cells at 14.8V, this will cause damage to the cells and probably fire.
From what I understand, using a balance lead basically charges each cell individually and matches them all together, This is used packs for helis, cars and aircraft. So in theory I think I can wire up all the individual battery holders to each pin on the balance plugs. the balance plugs get bigger depending on the size of the packs (IE 3S, 4S, 5S, 6S, 7S) So the only problem I can really see is that if it was set up to charge say 4 bats then you would have to have 4 in holders as it would detect a fault if you only have 3 in there. If that makes sense!
The only other way would be to build a small circuit that switches some fets or relays based on how many bats were in the holders. The relays would then switch the different pins on/off based on how many bats you were trying to charge. Of course you would also need to tell the charger how many cells/bats you wanted to charge,
Or as others have suggested just charge say 2/3 or 4 in parallel.
Not sure about Accucell but my Hyperion requires my confirmation on number of cells before it proceed to charge the pack. The charger can detect the number of cells in series but it still require confirmation for safety.
Yes, you can do it but bear in mind that if you build a charging rig that can charge up to 6 cells (max allowable on the Accucel), you still need to move the main charge ground wire to the negative end of the last cell in the series. If you have a 4 cells holder but only charges 3 cells, it will not work because the circuit is not completed unless you move the ground wire to the negative end of the last cell in the series or simply short out the 4th bay of your charging holder.
For flashlight application, IMO the simplest way is to use some magnets to hold the charge leads in place.
On the imax B6 clones (The Accucell is one), balance charging is pretty slow - as in 4-6 hours with 6 cells in varying states of (low) charge.
Parallel charging will be faster, but has its own drawbacks. In multi-cell lights I'd balance charge the cells or use two chargers (or charger channels) for the two cells. And check their voltages.
In single cell lights go with what's most convenient - cell balance is not an issue with single cell lights.
I have a multi cell light, so I guess I would want to balance them nicely.
So the Accucell 6 have 6 balance port, each of different plugs. So if I wanted to have to option of balancing 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 cells, I would need to buy a balance cable specific for each of them? Is there no 1 cable that does it all?
May someone please direct me to a place where I can perhaps buy all this cables in a pack (rather buy them individually from eBay) or a single versatile cable that does it all! Much appreciated!
But you will have remove the male plug and extend the wires so that you can charge 65mm cells. This is a 6S plug meaning you can charge up to 6 cells.
Procedures:
1) cut the male plug
2) lengthen the wires
3) attach magnets to all the 7 (seven) leads
4) if you charge 6 cells, you will attach all 7 leads. If you charge 5 cells, you will attach 6 leads and make sure you insulated the lead that you do not use to prevent electrical shorts.