Charging advice please

[gobbinerParticipant @gobbiner]

[gobbinerParticipant @gobbiner]

Ive just bought a NI-MH 4600 mah battery and a Ripmax PRO-peak Delta base fast charger. the charger has 3 settings 1, 5.2, and 5A i was charging on 5A as the shop told me, the battery was getting hot is this normal i have now put the charge on 5/2is this ok please thank you…Ray

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Ray. At 5A the battery would be charged up in under an hour, and this may be acceptable on a field racing, but will do the battery no good at all in the long run.

The heat is the battery being full, and converting unwanded electricity into heat.When it gets hot, its full (basically).

A 10% charge rate would be much better. In your case then, the 1A setting..

I would purchase a "normal" charger, and keep the fast charger for emergencies as you may be knackering the battery otherwise.

Ashley

¬

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

Just to emphasise what Ashley has said, conventional wisdom is to slow charge new NiMH battery packs for a few times to allow them to build up to full charge. Fast charging from new will very quickly spoil the battery and you may never get its full capacity working for you. Slow-charging is defined as C/10 where C is the capacity, so in this case that's 460mA for about 14-16 hours. You can buy a very reasonable mains slow charger from Component Shop.

Dave M

Edited By Dave Milbourn on 21/03/2012 15:41:39

[gobbinerParticipant @gobbiner]

Thank you guys i have now bought a suitable charger cheers

[Author]

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