Well that’s “unexpected”

[Aaron]

Got my Duratrax ICE yesterday and plugged it into my nice 20A mains supply. The combo works great 🙂 Not bad for a $300-$325 investment.

So I though ‘Hey I’ll plug in some of my old 1/10th batteries and see what they do. 1st was my original Tamiya 1700SCR (Sanyo Cells) NiCd pack… you remember the gold shrink ones from like 1992? Yup….

Did some very basic setup, once you learn how to drive the ICE it’s quite easy to use, and run a discharge and charge cycle. Yup looks like that battery is stuffed. So this monring a plugged in a newer 1700SCR pack (Sanyo cells) again NiCd and left it for a 4 cycle Discharge Charge. it will be interestign to see how it comes up.

OK Maybe I shoudl just go out and buy new batteries…..

But in the mean time can someone point me at a good primer for managing batteries, establishing testing methods and all that?

As I plan to use the ICE for charging AAAs etc to go into the Mini-Z I was also thinking about using it to do some very basic matching of cells. You know buy like 16 or so AAAs, cycle them to get their characteristics as single cells then use the most ‘like’ ones as a set of 4 in car… Crazy idea?

Thoughts?

A.

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Site Owner Guy.

[ph2t]

nice setup man. I’m running my ICE off a 12A supply. Using it to charge my fleet of AAA’s, some lipo’s and AA’s for the TX’s, also sub AAA sizes.

The largest battery I charged on it was a 2/3A GP1100’s, I was pumping them at 3.5A no sweats. Power supply held up. The Duratrax is a great charger.

The cylcing is great, even not in the fancy charging modes (which I’m yet to comprehend). Cycle the buggers at the lower count you can spare. ie: 2,3 4 cells at most. you need to fine tweak the deltaV value between 0.12 -0.15V per cell, this is more for high C charge rates, 2c+.

If you discharge at high C values, pull the cell/volt down to 0.9/0.8. I know this is ‘low’ per se but it helps drain the last vestige of current out of the buggers. If you don’t the discharge cycle stops prematurely since the cells underload drop below the (regular) 1.0c=V/cell threshold….

To cycle 4 800mah AAA’s I would

discharge @ 0.4A, charge @ 0.6A, discharge v/cell @ 0.9V, delta peak volt @ 0.13, cylce 4 times.

that’s a good one. a puritan would lower the discharge current even futher. but you’d want the batteries this week sometime.

ph2t.

[Aaron]

*nods* I understood that 🙂 I splurged at Jaycar at lunchtime and bought a variety of AAA cell holders, then popped in my LHS and got some nice (cheap?) heavy wire to make little charging cradles. Can do 1 Cell AAA, 2 Cell AAA, 4 Cell AAA and 4 Cell AA. Using banana (4mm) jacks to connect direct.

I’m already dropping things to 0.9V/Cell and using some fairly high discharge rates on teh larger packs to encourage some ‘recovery’. We’ll see how things shap up. Either way I’m glad the ICE has a easy to use side becuase going even slightly beyond the basics confuses the hell outa me at the moment!

A.

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Site Owner Guy.

[kevsta]

I bought the 8 AA cell holder from jaycar but Ice couldn’t properly detect the correct number of batteries for some strange reason….

Charging 4 AA, or AAAs is fine.

I have to agree, it’s a top charger, but when discharging sub c batteries you got to use a powerful fan to blow from underneath otherwise hot hot hot !!

[jamiekulhanek]

Guys I’ve had problems with cheap battery holders, they have very high resistance, and often screw up charges.

I suggest you buy/make a much heavier duty item.

[Admin]

Aaron,

I am not sure if you were aware, but I do remember that the Ice has a flex-charge mode for nicdsin which it charges for a few minutes, then discharges. This process goes on until the battery peaks. It is supposed to break down crystaline formations in your old nicd packs.

[Aaron]

Well here’s my first results…

The ‘Gold’ 1700SCR pack – first time around barely came up to 1100mah but after a 4 cycle is now holding a solid 1746mah.

My other Sanyo celled 1700SCR is holding a stable 1800+mah

Got a set of 4 powertech AAA 900mahs in there now. We’ll see what they report when I get home.

I’m going to give the Flex-Chrage mode a go on a old 2000mah pack I’ve got as it had great punch. Then theres the 5 1800mah packs to do.

Between all that about 5 sets of AAA as well.

So far though I’m right pleased with my results.

A.

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Site Owner Guy.

[Author]

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