Recommend me a charger

[jamiem]

Ok, as it turns out, the new charger i just bought (before deciding to go electric) will only charge up to 5 cell lipo's, and the t-rex 600's use 6 cell packs, so i need another new charger - DOH! I dont wanna spend an absolute fortune, but want something decent, what can you recommend? i found a shulze chamaleon on fleabay, charges 1-11 cells, any good? whats it worth? Final question, i assume im gonna need a balancer, again, what one?

Jamie

[Raptormadsteve]

Hi i purchased a robbe fun with bid chip system allows you to asign a chip to the battery and once programed it remembers that battery every time you charge. I also purchased flight power v balancer good for purpose!
Regards Steve

[LipolyGone]

It's a very good charger is the shultz chameleon.
I have the 630d & use it to charge all my lipos I dont do 6s on it but it is very inteligent & actualy stops you connecting stuff up incorectly or having the wrong settings etc.
They cost new £124 mate so general rule of no more than 2 3rds for 2nd hand value should work out to no more than £80 2nd hand mate.
Martin

[jamiem]

ok, its very local to me too, which is a bonus. what about a balancer, or does this depend on what packs im going to use?

[Stuart]

I have the Schulze isl 6-330d V8.41 Charger works a treat... I use it with the Flight power V balancer on both Flight power and Thunder Power battery packs.

[jamiem]

thanks stuart

[Bigbellypopper]

They cost new £124 mate so general rule of no more than 2 3rds for 2nd hand value should work out to no more than £80 2nd hand mate.

The Schulze isl 6-330d has recently dropped in price. Revolution models have them listed for £89.99

http://www.revolutionmodels.co.uk/ac...argers_43.html

They also stock the Thunder Power 1010c which is an excellent charger, If you buy the TP210V balancer as well, its a great combo

Cheers
Russ

[ChrisB]

The Chamaleon is very good and the V Balancer is better than nothing

The reason the Chamaleon has dropped in price is because they are bringing out a new built in balancer charger sometime soon,its on their website

I wouldnt pay no more than about £65 on EBay myself

The Robbe Power Fun charger is also good but is limited to 6 cell Lipo,the Chamaleon will do more so is a better investment

[Ashley Davis]

what packs you going to run? If you are planning on using the revolution cells then the charger of choice is the balancepro. It's a charger and balancer in one and will cost you less than the chamaleon plus separate balancer.

[jamiem]

im still learning ashley, and as such am open to suggestions. ive not yet bought the rex, but need to find out as much as i can about lipos and the 600 as i can. Please, educate me if you dare

[Ashley Davis]

damn, this could be a long post then....

Basically it comes down to this...there are two types of charging systems for lipos. The first is any old lipo charger paired up with a separate balancer. This is probably the most common charging system and what I tend to refer to as 'old technology'. I'll explain why shortly.
The second is a balancing charger, this is where the charger controls the charging process to each cell itself and monitors the cells as part of it's charge algorithms. This is the emerging or new technology.

So what's up with old lipo chargers and a balancer.....well the charger has very little clue about cells, it just monitors an overall voltage level and adjusts it's charge rate accordingly. The balancer takes the charge volts / amps and tries to ciontrol the balance of the cells by discharging any cells which are too high voltage compared to the rest. The problem is that most balancers only have a fairly small discharge circuit (usually about 1A) so if you are charging above 1A they just can't cope and tend to get very hot if there is a balancing issue amongst the cells. Generally they don't do much of a job of balancing, there's no control of the charge current just discharge of cells going above others in the pack.
Balancing chargers plug directly into the pack and it's balance lead, the chrger knows the voltage of all the cells and applies the necessary charge current / voltage to each individual cell. This is intelligent charging and tends to work much better. It also doesn't suffer from the 1A limit that a lot of separate balancers have (as described earlier).
There are a couple of balancing chargers on the market, the one's I use are the Cellpro 4S and the BalancePro 6S. I consider them to be the leading products in proper lipo care from a charging / balancing perspective.
Lipos come in various flavours, the Revolution cells from www.aurorra.com are designed to plug directly into the Cellpro or BalancePro chargers. They are also damn good lipos (see the other threads in the lipo section). My pack of choice is the Revolution 6S 4800 for the T-Rex 600.

[ChrisB]

Jamiem

If you have yet to get Lipos as well then i would also suggest the Balancepro charger with Revolution packs

The Chamaleon is a very good charger and versatile but as Ashley said its not very clever,i have found plug in balancers to be pretty poor but again they are better than nothing

I will give you an example,my TP 5000 pack seems to suffer with a slightly lower voltage in cell 1 after charging,i was not aware of this to start with due to no PC link capability that the Balancepro gives..

Once i had charged my TP i would connect it to my V Balancer and admire all the lights flashing but didnt know what was actually going on,basically it was just dropping cells 2 to 6 down to nearer cell 1 voltage which is wrong..

When i got the Balancepro and linked it to my PC i could watch the precise charge in every cell and see that the charger was tickling cell 1 up to the other cells voltages which is more desirable

The Balancepro is far superior to almost any other charger i can think of at present,ive heard the Thunder Power charger and Balancer work well but i have never used it and its very expensive anyway

So for a charger i would go for the Balancepro myself and the Revolution packs are priced in line with the Align packs and are a whole lot better

A phone call to Mike at Aurorra is recommended as he will give you loads of advice and help

Which ever route you go for i know you will not be dissapointed with the 600

[jamiem]

ok thanks, now for the final question, where can i get the balancepro 6s from? ive fouund places that sell the 4s, but not the 6s, same goes for the packs, where would you reommend i get them from? uk/abroad?

[Ashley Davis]

www.aurorra.com

You will need to phone as Mike is in process of a complete website overhaul and the 6S packs and chargers are currently not shown. However, I would recommend talking to Mike anyway regardless of whether you intend to buy he's a goldmine of knowledge on lipos and charging.

[jamiem]

ok will do, cheers. any idea on a rough price, so i now to prepare myself!