Michael, that’s what I was thinking too, that the charger should have balked at the mismatch of voltage, but it seemed happy.
I’ll give the CHARGE-DISCHARGE CYCLE a go.
Thanks.
If you read the reviews on this charger, about 50% are 5 stars, and about 40% 1 or 2 stars, on Amazon.
So, it seems that when it works, it works, but when it fails, it can have issues setting charging voltage, etc.
Interesting.
Greg
This probably won’t help much Steve; just relaying my experience, so sorry if I’m a pest.
I bought a USAT GP9 from a guy on Ebay. Opened it up and found that it comes with a Tenergy 14.8v 4400MaH battery pack. They replaced those with a 5200MaH pack five or six years ago. Anyway, I have a new Tenergy Universal Fast Smart TLP3000 1.5A Charger for Li-Ion battery packs (14.8V 4 cells). It has a built-in IC to cut off power automatically when the battery is fully charged. Green light comes on when it’s ready. Takes only about 15 or 20 minutes to charge. After recharging the loco a few times, it shuts down after 1/2 hour of run time. So…I just ordered a new Airwire 14.8V 6800 mAh Li-Ion battery, and we’ll see if that resolves the problem. Hopefully the charger isn’t an issue. Film at 11.
These 1.5A charge rates I’m noting are NOT correct for larger batteries and or cells in series-parallel battery configuration, such as 5400/6800mAh batteries. The manufacturer recommended charge rate foe ONE cell is 1.625 for the 3400mAh Sanyo/Panasonics @ maximum time interval of 4 hours. The Tenergy TLP3000 as mentioned above is adequate for a 4-cell battery only. Slow charging is NOT recommended for Li-Ion cells, less than 50% of the OEM recommendation is sloooow charging. The aforementioned larger batteries are comprised of TWO four cell batteries, simple math dictates a multiplier of two.
Michael
A full charge in that amount of time will really work the battery. That is assuming the battery is pretty low on charge, which was not stated.
Charging a 5.2 amp hour battery in 15 to 20 minutes, if fully depleted would that a huge amount of current, surely over 1.5 amps. Clearly 5.2 amp hours of charge cannot be “filled” in 15 to 20 minutes at 1.5 amps. 5 amps for an hour, or roughly 3 to 4 times that in 15 to 20 minutes. So 15 to 20 amps is roughly what would be needed for that time period and battery capacity.
Something is not right in this story. Perhaps the charger is terminating early, perhaps the battery is damaged. How long did it take when the battery was new to do a full charge, from empty?
(note that the run time reported does indeed match the amount of charge a 1.5 amp system could create in a short time)
Greg
Greg, if i used the auto feature of the charger, it would start sometimes at 5 amps, for a mostly depleted battery, then, as the battery “filled up,” the amperage would reduce, approaching zero as “full,” arrived. If I had only run for an hour or so, the auto feature would start at 3 amps, or so.
My understanding of electricity is such that one of my Commanding Officers was not willing to trust me with a light switch.
I probably misunderstood something here about slow charging being better than fast on auto, so selected 1.5 amps on manual.
I don’t know if the Tenergy came with an owners manual, I suppose it did, probably written in Chinglish. In the ten or so years that ive had this charger, my manual has migrated to the same place that houses all my 10mm sockets, and most of my 9/16 sockets, as well. The push button screen is not that user friendly, either. I can’t find an on-line version.
Can someone provide a path to the CHARGE-DISCHARGE screen?
Thanks.
Steve
Manual link below. See page 7.
Once you set mAh capacity the charger calculates the current required @ C1 to charge same. Thus the 5A you note. You can change the CHARGE-DISCHARGE current settings for any given cycle and or charge/discharge in any mode.
I suspect your 5600mAh battery is utilizing LG ICR 18650’s:
http://www.batteryspace.com/prod-specs/5702_5.pdf
Note LG wants you to charge at 0.5-1.0C. 0.5C=1350mAh/1.35A, 1C=2700mAh/2.7A
Discharge @ .05-2.0C
The info above applies to a SINGLE cell or a series connected battery only! You have a 14.4V 5,600mAh series-parallel ‘4S2P’ battery. In layman’s terms that means; two individual 4-cell-sereis wired-14.4V batteries are wired together in parallel to one another. Same as having TWO individual 4-cell 14.4V batteries , one in each hand and coupling or combining the positive (+) leads and the negative (-) leads together for a power source.
Michael
So in this case, charging at C for the pack would indeed be close to 5 amps, right 2 times 2.7 amps is 5.4 amps.
But again as I tried to make the most relevant comment, even at 5 amps, you could not charge a depleted battery in 15 to 20 minutes.
Without knowing the initial state of charge, cannot make any other intelligent observations on charge time.
In this case of this pack, I would expect no issues from charging at 1C or for sure 0.5c or approximately 2.7 amps, so 1.5 amps is very conservative, and probably too conservative, definitely very slow.
Greg
Ok, I have to laugh, Michael and Greg, you both left me in the dust at “Steve.” (https://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-foot-in-mouth.gif)(https://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-tongue-out.gif)(https://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)Did I mention that I’m not to be trusted with a light switch?
Thanks for the manual. I’ll see if I can sus out the CHARGE/DISCHARGE cycle. Do you recommend the auto charge function?
Steve Featherkile said:
Ok, I have to laugh, Michael and Greg, you both left me in the dust at “Steve.”
At least you got further than I did !
Now, how did I thank John, twice? I thought that was verboten.
I have never seen that Steve, you must have superpowers!
Yes, I would use the auto charge function.
Greg
Hmm. I tried to thank you twice Stever, but it wouldn’t let me. But I will happily accept all the thanks I can get!
I told you there was going to be film at 11. But I didn’t tell you which day!
So…….to make a short story long, last night I swapped out my old Tenergy 4400 MaH battery with a new Airwire 6800 MaH battery. Going forward, I will use these particular batteries in my USAT GP9 and F3 A-B battery conversions. I’ll of course use a different battery in my NW-2. It took me four hours to charge up the new battery. Everything looks good so far - engine runs like a top. I then inquired within about the use of my Tenergy Universal Fast Smart TLP3000 1.5A Charger for Li-Ion battery packs and its compatibility with my particular battery pack. According to the gentleman who’s helping me with my installs and who is not only an installer for the BAGRS club (he’s done a few hundred conversions) and is an Airwire distributor and the guy who sold me the Tenergy charging unit. He says the charger I’m using is just fine. Not just happy with one opinion, I asked Mike at Reindeer Pass, the guy who sold me the new battery. He told me the charger I’m using works fine and he sells quite a few of them along with the Airwire and HJE batteries. Then I solicited the advise of Keith Gutierrez, the owner of CVP/Airwire, and asked him what he thought of my using the Tenergy TLP3000 1.5A charger with his new 6800 MaH Airwire battery. He sells these particular chargers too and he also recommends it and says I’m good to go.
So I’m a happy Mike. I musta had a bad battery to begin with. We’ll see what happens going forward. (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)
Michael,
So lets see if I get this right…… The local installer and re-sellers with some experience with Li-Ion batteries/chargers have more street cred than the OEM charger/cell manufacturers and their published specifications are to be ignored? I’m going to politely suggest while your experts are credible individuals they’re uniformed and have limited experience of this battery technology and specifically series-parallel batteries. I know more about this stuff than most and can offer that the OEM cell builders are most definitely savvy! And together with nearly two decades of empirical experience with literally thousands of these batteries in my dust I recommend that you follow all OEM recommendations.
Tenergy’s TLP3000 1.5A charger; specification/description in quotes below:
“Intelligent charger designed for all types of 14.8V (4 cells) Li-Ion Battery packs including Polymer Li-Ion and Cylindrical Li-Ion”.
Ever wonder why the failure rate of the larger capacity multi-cell “series-parallel” batteries is greater than the 4 cell batteries, my assertion is their improperly
charged and maintained.
Does anyone have personal knowledge of someone damaging there batteries because they followed the cell/charger manufacturers guidelines for a specific cell type?
Ever look into your laptop’s charging rate, these use Li-Ion cells too.
If you bought a Tesla Roadster would you charge it at 23% of their recommendation? (23% of 6.5A = 1.5A TLP3000 output)
Michael
A lower charge rate than recommended is not necessarily “best” and can actually accelerate damage/wear.
Look at how many nicad battery packs were damaged by “trickle charging”, and how low charge rates can cause dendrite buildup. This example is nicad, but it’s a good example.
An analogy is shifting a car into a higher gear too soon for speed/load and lugging the motor… many people did this to save gas, only to destroy main bearings.
Greg
Michael Glavin said:
Michael,
So lets see if I get this right…… The local installer and re-sellers with some experience with Li-Ion batteries/chargers have more street cred than the OEM charger/cell manufacturers and their published specifications are to be ignored? I’m going to politely suggest while your experts are credible individuals they’re uniformed and have limited experience of this battery technology and specifically series-parallel batteries. I know more about this stuff than most and can offer that the OEM cell builders are most definitely savvy! And together with nearly two decades of empirical experience with literally thousands of these batteries in my dust I recommend that you follow all OEM recommendations.
Tenergy’s TLP3000 1.5A charger; specification/description in quotes below:
“Intelligent charger designed for all types of 14.8V (4 cells) Li-Ion Battery packs including Polymer Li-Ion and Cylindrical Li-Ion”.
Ever wonder why the failure rate of the larger capacity multi-cell “series-parallel” batteries is greater than the 4 cell batteries, my assertion is their improperly
charged and maintained.
Does anyone have personal knowledge of someone damaging there batteries because they followed the cell/charger manufacturers guidelines for a specific cell type?
Ever look into your laptop’s charging rate, these use Li-Ion cells too.
If you bought a Tesla Roadster would you charge it at 23% of their recommendation? (23% of 6.5A = 1.5A TLP3000 output)
Michael
I have a question;
Is a 4S 2P battery, which I believe is 2 lots of 4 cells in series that that are connected in parallel, regarded as a 2 cell battery i.e. the 4 in series considered as 1 cell or is it an 8 cell battery as it has 8 cells altogether if the latter then would a 4 cell charger not be appropriate?
As for the OEM specs I think that the majority of the batteries used in hobby applications are of Chinese manufacturer (cost being the main driver) and I would take their specs with a grain of salt regarding accuracy.
You cant ever completely treat a multi-cell pack as fewer cells.
Yes, you do have 2 batteries in parallel, sort of. The problem is your 2 batteries are each 4 cells, and thus exhibit much more variation in terminal charge voltage for example.
Bottom line, is you want to be more careful in charging, looking for imbalances developing, thus “balancing chargers” were born. In my opinion one of the saving graces for our hobby is that we do not typically work the cells as hard as the R/C cars and especially the model planes.
All that notwithstanding, if it was me, I would be doing 0.5 C most of the time, and 1 C every so often. Virtually all cells seem to develop imbalances when too lightly charged. Heavy use and charging seems to just wear things out a bit sooner. This is my general observation over 40 years. Can’t give a hard and fast rule.
A piece of information, a lot of people give me their cast-off laptops (I help a lot of people with crashed computers and upgrades), and quite often there is a single weak cell in the series string of batteries, and the rest fine, so it happens.
Greg
GAP said:
I have a question;
Is a 4S 2P battery, which I believe is 2 lots of 4 cells in series that that are connected in parallel, regarded as a 2 cell battery i.e. the 4 in series considered as 1 cell or is it an 8 cell battery as it has 8 cells altogether if the latter then would a 4 cell charger not be appropriate?
As for the OEM specs I think that the majority of the batteries used in hobby applications are of Chinese manufacturer (cost being the main driver) and I would take their specs with a grain of salt regarding accuracy.
A 4S2P = 8 cell battery
A typical 4-cell charger with fixed charging current is most likely Inadequate to charge an 8-cell 4S2P battery if you read the OEM charger and cell manufacturers published specifications. It all depends on the charger in plays charging current output and the capacity of the battery under charge, not necessarily cell count.
If you charge your batteries @ ½ the rated batteries mAh capacity you’ve met the OEM cell builders slow charge specification. 0.5C or ½ the rated capacity is widely recognized by OEM’s as their minimum charge rate while 1C or 1 x battery capacity is the recommended charge rate.
½ / 2800mAh = 0.5C @ 1.4 Amps charge current…
1 x 2800mAh = 1C @ 2.8 Amps charge current…
½ 5600mAh = 0.5C @ 2.8 Amps charge current…
1 x 5600mAh = 1C @ 5.6 Amps charge current…
Yes, there are low quality Lithium-Ion cells out there that exaggerate their potential… That said industry standard charging practice seems to prevail with regard to any given Lithium cell type and cell capacity. I’d suggest reputable battery assemblers/resellers focused on the train market use name brand cells.
Michael