The fan in my Opus lasted 2 days and it went totally wonkers. It appears that someone put grease in the bushing (which shouldn’t be necessary for genuine oil-lite bushings) but they completely missed the shaft.
FWIW; it is a 12V fan; You can remove the fan blade if you remove the pink o-ring that holds it in. I used a safety pin to wedge it out of its groove. The magnet forces will hold the fan in place. Although this is standard practice, the o-ring doesn’t serve a real purpose in this fan.
I used a pin as an oil dropper and used a very light bicycle chain oil (similar to sewing machine oil) to lubricate both the shaft and the bushing while they were apart.
One of the problems is that the fan blade is simply not balanced to any degree. Once it is placed in the Opus housing, the vibration noise is amplified 10 fold even with the dabs of Fijik. But this isn’t the worst of it. If that was all, it would workable.
When I re-assembled the unit, I also left the beauty cover off as this just made the noise worse. I also left the o-ring and sticker off so I can maintain the bushing with oil without disassembly: put oil in the groove and push the fan blade into the bushing to get lubrication in there.
When the blade really goes nuts, the wobble from hell, it sounds like a baby bird getting mauled. There is no way I would let this charger run without being nearby. Sad, as this is the most I’ve spent on a charger in 6 years of flash-a-holism.
In short, this unit has juts made my “don’t bother” list. Yes its nice to characterize cells; yes it is nice since it does NiMh and NiCd; having an internal V-selector is kind of odd; Every bay seems to have a mind of its own on accuracy; and yes, mine had the J1 jumper bridged, and slot 1 is dead-on. Others are still high.
one can only hope XTAR will come up with unit like this… it will likely be a winner over this “thing”.
Yes, You are right, but they are not visible if you look at directly (90 degree)
I think it gets cooler from top.
While charging at 1000mA at 4 bays and laptop fan is under the unit. it has started to run the tiny fan.
When I put it on top, the tiny fan has stopped.
That is because the temp sensors are in the case right next to the positive terminal. If you put the fan on top, you are cooling the sensors, but not the underlying thermal problem. You really want to get airflow over the entire PCB inside.
i got this charger from the GB but i have only one problem with it , it is terminating charging at low voltage about 4.15 i don’t know why and it reads about .05 more than the actual reading with My DMM so is there is any solution for this ?
Yes, it is documented in the group buy thread that you need to remove solder blob "J1" for units reading 0.05v too high (i.e. terminating charge 0.05v too low). I did this mod on mine. I'll see if I can find the post with pics and link it back here.
Thanks for the detailed review. I recently got the “Powerfocus” version from Banggood and have been impressed with its features.
Apparently there are similar devices that have a USB output to charge smartphones/battery packs, etc…I haven’t been able to figure out if the same features (refresh, test, etc…) are available on that port though. Anyone know of devices that would do that? It seems like a “connector” problem ?
The chargers with USB connectors don't use them to charge external batteries. They couldn't. There's no way for them to know what size or type of battery is at the end of the cable. The USB is used to power external devices. It turns the charger into a battery bank. Put 4 18860's into a charger, plug a usb cable between the charger and your tablet, and you've got a portable source of extra juice. The charger isn't powered in this scenario.
I suppose regarding the fan issue I'll just have to open it up and put a dab of superlube or silicone grease. My old laptop fan requires this maintenance every year and it really makes the noise and vibration completely go away, or at the very least make it unnoticeable.
For what it's worth, the apparent chance of this charger undercharging (based on input here) IMO is a good thing, less stress on cells especially aging laptop pulls.
My main reason for getting this charger is the discharge function to check capacity of all my laptop pulls, and future laptop pulls. I already own a C9000 for NiMH cells and I'm spoiled by the functions it provides. Plus I paid double the price for it compared to what I paid for this charger so it is well worth it at this price point.
V3.1 only discharges li-ion cells down to 3.1v when v2.2 discharges li-ion down to 2.8v
The reason for this change is that low voltage protection on (protected) li-ion cells is set at 2.8v and if this cuts in before the charge finishes the display will show NUFF and you will loose all your data.
The problem is a lot of li-ion capacity`s in data sheets are from discharging to 2.8v and if you only discharge to 3.1v a lower capacity will show.
EDIT: The C3100 and C3400 are supposedly the same, the C3400 might have been made for a certain seller.
