Charging Nanotech 160mah with accucell charger, am I doing it right?

[Gian]

Hello, I have to apologise, I know that there are plenty of informations on how to charge lipos on the internet, but I'm not sure I'm getting these principles, therefore I'm not sure I'm charging my Lipos in the right way.
I have 6 Turnigy Nanotech 160mah that I connect in parallel (by an unbalanced harness) to my my accucell 6 charger.
I select the LiPo program, set the current to 1.0A and the voltage to 3.7V, it takes just a bit more than a hour before complete charge. Am I doing it right or terribly wrong? In case I'm doing it wrongly, can you explain me why?
Also, is there any other set up that would allow me to charge these batteries faster?
Thank You!

[cjcj1949]

That is how lots of people charge them. Most people try to make sure that all lipos are at the same volts. Lipos shouldn't be discharged all the way. It kills them fairly quickly, but they are cheap. You might get better results if you can balance charge them. It might sound stupid as there is only one cell, but the balance connector does measure volts accurately, an unbalanced charge measures the battery voltage and the voltage drop due to the current going down the main cable. This allows the charger to output a higher voltage as the battery volts are being accurately measured. It may not make a difference as the charger may be clever enough to work out the voltage drop and allow for it.
If you can fly for five minutes before the heli dies, then fly for 4. I prefer the celectra charger as it charges 4 at once and you can plug in a cell as soon as its been used, so long as its not too hot.

Those batteries are usually charged at 300ma. So you could set your charger to 1.8 amps. It isn't critical. If you charge at a higher current they probably won't last as long. Having shorter flights will make the charging faster. With four batteries and the celectra quad charger I can fly as much as I want.

The other point is you don't need to wait until the end of charge. The last bit of charging takes a long time for not much gain in flight time. If you stop when the charge current gets to 20% of the start value you will save a lot of time. You can always buy more batteries. Do let the motor get cool before flying again, unless you don't mind replacing it more often.

[brummycraig]

Charging Nanotech 160mah with accucell charger, am I doing it right?

You are currently doing it just right with all 6 batteries on the lead, 6x 160ma = 960ma or just shy of 1 amp so you are basically charging at 1c. My understanding is that the small nano techs can be charged at upto 5c so in theory you could charge the 6 at 960ma x 5 = 4800ma or 4.8 amps and this would charge them very quickly, however it may reduce the life of the cells and it frightens me charging at such a high rate, personally I often charge at 2c (2 amp aprox) or if I'm in a real rush 3c (3amp aprox) this should be less than half an hour.

Craig