www.nightvisionforumuk.com

Long wait for hoby king, but finally got them here. A bit confusing with all leads. Need to charge 18650 batteries, I have a twin serial holder. Any ideas on the setting I should use? How about the blue battery pack from el wirecraft, what's the setting on those?
Looks a solid charger, just need to learn how to charge and discharge these batteries.

Toni

Hi Toni, here is a video link for that charger. Hope is of some use.
...and I forgot to add it.
http://youtu.be/vOJdyaBbosE

Thanks, Im trying to work it out. It's a amazing bit of kit. Would like to do a review soon.

Toni

watcha Toni

I'm guessing you would have to add balance leads to the elwire battery pack if you wanted to use all the functions on the Imax

I've made up battery packs using 3x 18650's before, with balance leads, and the imax makes sure each cell is charged to the same capacity......you can also discharge them too

info on balance leads http://scriptasylum.com/rc_speed/lipo.html

cheers john

Thanks John, is balancing abslute!

Toni

As I understand it, when using the IMax to charge lithium batteries, it expects balance leadsto be connected to it so it can monitor the voltage of each cell.
I wouldn't be surprised if it won't charge unless balance leads are connected.
Clearly the Elwire battery packs don't have balance leads, so it might be necessary to open up the battery pack and solder wires to the protection ciruit pcbs at the appropriate places.
Having said that, the chargers that come with the Elwire battery packs are perfectly OK for charging those packs because the protection circuits on each cell prevent bad things from happening to the battery.
The Elwire packs are designed for low current discharge and low current charging and in that situation balance charging is simply not necessary.
The IMax is primarily designed for charging lithum batteries used with RC models and those battery packs are optimised for extremely high current discharges and have no protection circuits.
In that situation it's necessary to have each cell charged to exactly the same voltage and it takes a balance charger to do that.

Cheers

Bruce

Another great info about batteries and charging methods, Bruce, thanks!