What Quad-Charger do you recommend?

[Si Goodchild]

Guys,

With my Raptor 90 SE Electric about ready for its maiden, my thoughts are now turning towards a new charger. I currently have a standard 50w Turnigy Accucel which has performed flawlessly for over 3 years, but now I need to charge pairs of 6s 5000mah batts I'm thinking that a 4-channel charger could be the way forward. Personally, I'd rather charge 4 batteries slowly at 50w each (2.0 Amps, so about 2 hours to charge) that one at a time really quickly (and thus requiring my constant attention to swap batteries over etc).

I've been looking for a quad charger, but availability in the UK seems a a bit patchy and reviews on the HobbyKing site have been a bit patchy with some reports of balancing issues. Can anyone here offer a positive recommendation from personal experience?

Si

[jamiem]

Why not look at one of the new generation parallel chargers? I use a PL8, but the PL6 is cheaper and would still allow you to charge 4 6s 5000's at 2c (just) or 1c with ease. Plug up to 8 packs in at once, set it going and your set. All packs will be done at the same time this negating the need to constantly swap packs over. Not the cheapest option, but one of the best out there at the moment IMO. £200 for the PL6 and 2 boards, around £75 for a home made 1800w power supply, job done

[sacko]

I've had the quad charger, excellent for 3s packs, a complete PITA for anything bigger.

I have now bought a PL6

[Si Goodchild]

I've had the quad charger, excellent for 3s packs, a complete PITA for anything bigger.

I have now bought a PL6

Interesting that there's a difference, what makes you say that?

[sacko]

I personally couldnt wait for 2 hours for a pack to charge, and if it is an older pack they take forever to balance at the end.

There is a handful of advantages of owning a Cellpro over any of the chinese Quad chargers. One being that a Cellpro actually looks after your packs by the way they charge.

The PL6 is can be fully configured to my needs via the PC link, so I can set 25 different presets etc. You are also able to monitor the packs more effectively by checking Internal Resistance/cahrge graphs etc.

[tyjudd]

I love my Cellpro PL6 2x3300 6s in about 15 mins I only have two flight packs don't need no more because buy the time I've flown a pack out and sorted myself out the other pack is ready to go!

[LipolyGone]

Is the pl6 & pl8 a one port or two port charger?
I'm trying to get my head round this parallel charging phenominum if I had 3s packs for my 450 & 6s packs for my fusion
how would this parallel charging work for me if I bought a pl6?

[jamiem]

Its a single port charger, able to parallel charge up to 8 packs using the cellpro balance boards. You must only charge packs with the same cell count though, so you could charge all of your 6s packs at once, and then all of your 3s packs at once.

I've had 4 6s 5000 packs on the go at 2c and still only pulled 800w out of the power supply, so it's a very very capable charger (PL8 in my case).