Help needed from owners of Hobby charger

Batteries and Chargers Chargers
1

I tried to find a charger that can charge both Ni-Mh and Li-Po and google answer me the only solution is an Hobby charger.

I have no experience with that so i need help from people that have one of this charger:

- I can use it to charge any kind of batteries with different charge rate?

- I can use it to charge many batteries in series? It can check the status of every battery?

- Do you think are better then stand-alone charger (trustfire, XTAR..)?

I see Imax B6 (with integrated power supply) and Turnigy accucell 6 as budget hobby charge. I see that someone have this charger (old4570, brted and xxllmm4 if i'm not wrong). Do you think that are good charger?

Sorry if some question is a bit silly.. Thanks everyone

2

This are the link to the charger:

IMAX b6: http://cgi.ebay.it/3S-iMAX-B6-AC-B6AC-Lipo-NiMH-RC-Battery-Balance-Charger-/140564449704?pt=Radio_Control_Parts_Accessories&hash=item20ba4b49a8

Turnigy: http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__7028__Turnigy_Accucel-6_50W_6A_Balancer%2FCharger_w%2F_accessories.html

3

I have the Hobbyking Turnigy Accucell 6 also and it is a great charger there are couple things you should know. This charger does not come with a power supply so you need to buy one or use a power supply from a laptop. The input is 11-18 volts, I used my thinkpad power supply until I found out it costs $70 dollars to replace so I bought a 12volt 5 amp LCD monitor power supply on e-bay for $10 dollars also you can power it from a 12 volt car battery. It does not come with a battery holder so I made on out of an Ultrafire 18650 x2 battery holder a couple springs and some wood screws. This charger has so many functions, I have not figured them all out yet but I imagine it can do anything you need it to including charger any type of rechargeable battery, multiple batteries, discharge testing and storage settings. I had to download the manual since one was not included in the box. It also can be set to alarm when it's done charging so you get an audible alert when it's done which is nice. I highly recommend this charger I did not use it a lot at first because it is so complicated but once I figured it out it is my go to charger.

4

I have the Turnigy too. I think the Imax is essentially the same thing, but I can't say for sure. Looking back, I could have saved some money by just buying the Turnigy, but at the time I didn't know if I would use li-ion batteries like I do now (or have so many flashlights!) so I wanted to get something cheap (I wasn't going to buy a $35 charger for a $20 P60 host). Now I've pretty much stopped using the cheap chargers because I feel confident the Turnigy is doing them correctly. But it is a little more trouble than just popping batteries into a charger and waiting for the light to turn green. And without battery holders it is a little more trouble using magnets to hold the clamps to the ends of the battery and making sure contact isn't lost or shorted, etc. And I only charge one battery at a time whereas my $8 charger can do 2. I don't mind a little more trouble to have something that can do so much more though. I like knowing that after 90 minutes on the charger my batteries aren't still cooking away at 1A, but are just topping off at 0.2A which you can't know when all you get is a green light.

5

I have the Turnigy Accucel 6 AND the Imax B6. They are basically the same unit - almost identical. The software looks exactly the same. They probably come from the same factory. My Accucel 6 seems to work just fine. The Imax B6 is a piece of c**p. It errors out and resets all the time. Can barely charge any battery at all. I have had some luck charging pb batteries with it, but nothing else. It could be a faulty unit, I guess.

The reviews from customers on the Hobbyking site are not very glowing either. The Accucel seems to have a better following.

I think that there are 'real' Imaxs, and 'fake' Imaxs. I am guessing I have a fake as it is rubbish.

Next time I will get myself a better quality unit - the iCharger 106B, for example. The problem is these are about 3 times the price, so it is hard to justify. Currently the Accucel is around $22, whereas the iCharger is $79. The idea is to go to the Hobbyking website and look at all the comments from customers.

I like this one also

Some of the units have scathing comments from customers. Virtually none of the Hobbyking units seem any good. And none of the various Turnigy units either, except the Accucel-6. There was a nice Turnigy unit with an onboard screen - looked very nice - but every user thought it was very poor.

6

The imax B6 is a entry level hobby charger , I use it for discharging cells rather than charging them ..

I use a dedicated AA AAA charger and dedicated Li-ion chargers / 16340 - 18650 .

But if you have to have one , the B6 can do the job , unfortunately , the more you pay , the more you get with hobby chargers .

If you looking for advise , get a decent AA AAA charger , and a Li-ion charger .. and if you want to start testing [ capacity ] then you might want that hobby charger .

7

I disagree with the suggestion that you get a dedicated NiMh and a dedicated Li-Ion charger. I have had exactly that for years and it has not worked out very well for me. I have even had NiMH batteries explode on me in a dedicated NiMH charger. The problem is, to get a decent NiMH charger, you would pay as much (or more than) a hobby charger. And then you would have to do the same with a Li-Ion charger. I have 3 or 4 $20-30 dedicated NiMh chargers. So if you want a good, CHEAPER option, then the Hobby Charger is still the way to go.

Another issue is balancing cells in a multicell torch. These are becoming much more common- I have two myself. One is a 2x18650 (SR 3800), and one is a 3x18650 torch (the TF 3T6). It seems very advisable to balance batteries before you use them in these sorts of torches. A dedicated charger simply cannot do that. I know I can use a multimeter to test each cell before use, but that is most inconvenient and it does not seem all that practical to me.

There is another issue - and to me this is a really big one. You have no idea what the dedicated charger is doing. It could be doing a top job - or it could be totally stuffed. You have no idea. If the green LED comes on, you hope the battery is charged. My cheap Li-ion charger has gone the whole day with out the green light coming on. I have no idea what is going on - have the batteries charged? Are they just slow? No idea. A hobby charger shows you every step of the way. With a lot of models (even some very cheap ones), you can even display the charge curves on a PC screen in real time. That might be a bit over the top, but I have much more confidence that my batteries are being charged correctly with a hobby charger than with a dedicated one.

And I think the differences between the cheap (entry level) ones and the better ones is not so much a difference in functions - they all seem to do pretty much the same thing. They all use the 4 button layout, and pretty much the same software. The difference is in power (of course) and quality. Power is not such an issue with us in the torch world. A basic 50-100W unit would seem fine. So the real difference is in quality. Some balance well (iCharger, etc). Some do not do so well (iMax). The problem is the price difference between the cheaper units ($20+) and the midrange units ($80+) is a big jump. And a high end unit is up nearer $200+. If you are into RC, then I guess you would need to look at more differences. But for charging torch batteries only, it is hard to justify a $200 price tag for an item that does the same thing as a $20 charger. I have a couple of the $20 units, and I am fairly happy with them. The Accucel-6 seems to work perfectly for charging single cells. I do not have the balancing cables yet, so do not know how it performs in that mode. The iMax does not even charge single cells, so that unit will probably end up in the bin. I am seriously looking at a better unit (the iCharger 106b) simply because it seems to be more reliable and better quality. And it also has a USB-PC function that might be good.

But I would not move to an iCharger because it has more features or because it charged better. The only extra feature that I see in the iCharger is that it can measure battery internal resistance - which seems like a useful thing, but nothing special. I would get a better unit simply because of reliability. And perhaps the iCharger (or similar) would be a bit more accurate - that seems like a good thing! One thing with some of the cheaper hobby chargers seems to be the accuracy of the balancing system. A number of iMax users complain about poor accuracy. The Accucel-6 seems to be a bit better (perhaps even adequate - dunno yet). The iCharger seems good. So if this turns out to be important, I guess this reason alone will justify going to a better unit.

What I see as the biggest problem with hobby chargers is the amount of messing about you have to go to get get charging cradles. You might buy special holders (and modify them), or get magnets, etc. You will have to solder up balancing cables, etc. It is a lot of messing about, and a lot of people simply don't want to do that. This is a fair concern, and for these people a dedicated charger is probably best.