I also have a Energizer 15min AA/AAA charger coming for NIMH batteries. I got a great deal off of ebay on one today for $13.14 shipped with 4 NIMH batteries. They are over $30 at Walmart.
Here's mine as of five minutes ago. There are 3 hobby chargers not in the picture as they tend to get used outdoors or in the kitchen. So they, and their PSUs are elsewhere.
The ugly thing on a stick on top of the Maha is a balance charging setup for up to 6 18650s that got dropped once too often.
There are other charges but i don't use them so much. The Xtar 6 cell charge gets used the most, followed by the Maha. The little Ultrafire on the right just gets used for charging 10440s.
I get the feeling that something very bad is going to happen at this charge rate.
Here is my basic setup. 4Sevens lithium charger for my two 18650s and one 17670 and a LaCrosse BC500 (that I finally found a broken solder joint in that was causing the first two bays to drop out) for my stack of eneloops.
I don't think lithium ions will steam. I know you're joking but I know they don't contain water based electrolytes as water and lithium make for good fires.
The steam is probably due the the cell venting poisonous gases. You are not suppose to charge the a single (1S) cell with anything other than 1S. You are risking your house being burnt down.
Here are some horror stories mainly due to wrong charging voltage and current: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=719116
I usually charge at 1C but 2C is probably the max charging current that I would use on my rechargeable flashlight batteries without having a smoke detector and a fire extinguisher next to it.
I have a box with just about every lead and adaptor you can think of for charging or discharging just about any thing, the only thing that limit,s you with hobby chargers, is your imagination as you can make any lead or adaptor to charge any type of battery and places like hobby king sell leads dirt cheap that normaly just need a quick mod to suit your plugs.
I like to balance charge 6 x 18650,s
A link on hobby chargers it has some pic,s of a bit of some of the leads i use most oftern starting at post number 47
Well I'm pretty sure the CPSC would have put a recall on the battery chargers by now if they proved to be unsafe. And I also doubt that Energizer would make a product that they themself would be liable for millions upon millions of dollars of product liability. I know of no product recall on this charger.
A 15-minute charger isn't unsafe - it is pretty hard to make an NiMH explode. And my one is the pickiest about which cells it'll accept of any charger I've used.
It's just that charging at those rates (7.5A - actually quite a bit more, but pulsed to average at 7.5A) dramatically shortens the cell life. You'll be lucky to get 150 cycles out of the cells before they become useless. About ten cycles and the cells will be in noticeably worse condition and self-discharge becomes ridiculous.
My only use for the thing nowadays is to check cell quality - if that charger will accept the cell then it is definitely in good condition.
I don't think Energizer do sell them any more. I seem to recall they stopped supplying them several years ago.
There is some quite informative discussion in the Other Place on those:
My memory is at fault - they aren't as quickly destructive of cells as I remembered.
And as far as that picture above in reference to using this charger is just that...an exaggerated scare tactic claim that is falsifying the safety about using this charger.
And technically the picture should be removed in reference to why it was originally posted to try and show false safety concerns with using the Energizer 15 min charger when there are none. Technically Energizer could sue for false accusations about their product if they really thought that it would prove damaging to this product in a wrong about way.
And that is just a little warning to the guy that posted it. Maybe he should heed his own warning.