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  #1  
Old 09-27-2007, 06:15 PM
SuperJason SuperJason is offline
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Battery charge rate?

I bought the Hobbico Elite battery charger because of some recommendations from people on this forum.

I finally have it in my hands, but I'm not sure what charge rate I should use. By default, it is set to 500ma. I think I can set it from nearly 0 to 2 amps.

I have the default 7.2v 1200mah battery.

How do I go about figuring that out?
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  #2  
Old 09-27-2007, 07:32 PM
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BloodyBastard BloodyBastard is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperJason View Post
.. By default, it is set to 500ma. I think I can set it from nearly 0 to 2 amps..
To maximize the 1200mAh for more run time use a charge rate of 0.50A. This can take over an hour to almost 2 hours charge. Using a charge rate of 1.50A will allow the motor to draw Amps at a faster rate, shorten the time it takes to charge the pack ( less than an hour), but also result in shorter runtimes.
So your choice is.. do you want more power for the motor and sacarifice runtime for the sake of a shorter charge time? Or do you want longer runtimes with adequate power by being a little patient waiting for the batt pack to charge?
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  #3  
Old 09-27-2007, 07:36 PM
SuperJason SuperJason is offline
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Thanks!

Thank you, that was very helpful.

Is there any advantage to going even lower than .5 amps? There are times that I don't plan on using it for a while, so I can be patient.
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  #4  
Old 09-27-2007, 07:42 PM
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BloodyBastard BloodyBastard is offline
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Depends on the application as well as the type of batt pack. The best thing to do with marginal cells like the ones used in the stock proPulse pack is to be consistant with the charge rate. Use 0.50A, it will be adequate power and give a decent runtime. If you don't plan on running the vehicle immediately after charging, leave the batts unplugged from the esc. Rule of thumb is to always leave the batts unplugged when not in use.

cheers
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  #5  
Old 09-27-2007, 08:58 PM
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alfred alfred is offline
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When the cells are Gp's, Intellects, and Elite i like to charge them at 1.5amps or 2amps for more punch.....i really dont know the quality of the pp packs....so they might not like the charge rate at all...some cells like to get hot and some just get warm.
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  #6  
Old 09-27-2007, 09:15 PM
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Erock 808 Erock 808 is offline
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Another thing that you need to factor in, is how many battery packs do you have? For example, I've got four Pro-Pulse battery (and three for my RC18MT plus a Li-Po, for a combined count of eight) packs. Since I've got so many battery packs, I charge them at 2.0 amps. I get a lot of punch from my batteries, but as BB mentioned, I get shorter running times to the pack. But it doesn't affect me because since I've got so many battery packs, I can change them out as I'm charging the next pack.

I'm assuming that you've only got one battery pack, so I'd recommend that you charge it at 1.5 amps. You should invest in more packs. You'll have tons more fun by running multiple packs!
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  #7  
Old 10-06-2007, 03:21 PM
Nakarti Nakarti is offline
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I modded a stick-pack fast charger(charges 1500mah packs in 1/2 hour) to connect to the PP packs, and it does charge them, but they can get smoking hot if they aren't dead first. Good thing it has an external thermal sensor.
Anyway, I didn't see much drop in the runtime until I smoked the battery with my 'field charge pack' (A 9.6V standard pack with different leads on it) and melted off half the heatshrink, by not having it dead first.
The field pack charged at 3 amps, which got the PP pack a little warm when it started low and cold.

This was on the 1.6AH pack, the 1.2 has had a similar thermal response, but has lower run times(obviously.) The 1.6, despite being smoked(liquid vinyl reinsulated exposed metal) still runs fine for now.

The charger mod is really an adapter, made with RadioShack replacement battery leads(23.144 iirc) and chopped end from the pro-pulse slow charger.
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