If you had $1000.00 to spend on a charger and power supply, what would you buy?

[jhelber08]

I wonder. I have the multi 4 and assumed it is time to upgrade to the 10xp. All I want is to charge my receiver batteries. However I've been told to skip the 10xp and buy the Power lab 6 or 8. I'm calling Revolix in the morning.

I upgraded from the hitec x4 to the pl 6 a few months ago and at the time I had just gotten one of the 60" ef planes. Prior to that, all I had was 2s rx batteries, a dozen or so foamy batteries and a couple of 3s batteries for park fliers. To charge a single 6s battery for the new electric plane would take a couple of hours on the x4 vs 20 minutes (to charge 3 at a time on the pl6) It also works great for rx batteries. Usually when I go to the field I charge anywhere from 4-6 2s lipos in parrallel on the pl 6. Vs the x4, the pl6 seems to balance the batteries more accurately and faster. It never hurts to have more charger than what you need. Another decent charger to consider in your case would be the icharger 206. I bought one of those as well to do rx batteries in the event that my pl6 was occupied with the bigger stuff.

I also use the storage feature quite a bit on the pl6. I work offshore and one of the things I do the day before I leave is put all the batteries I used over my 3 weeks home back to storage charge. The pl6 blows through that task easily.

 

[pawnshopmike]

I upgraded from the hitec x4 to the pl 6 a few months ago and at the time I had just gotten one of the 60" ef planes. Prior to that, all I had was 2s rx batteries, a dozen or so foamy batteries and a couple of 3s batteries for park fliers. To charge a single 6s battery for the new electric plane would take a couple of hours on the x4 vs 20 minutes (to charge 3 at a time on the pl6) It also works great for rx batteries. Usually when I go to the field I charge anywhere from 4-6 2s lipos in parrallel on the pl 6. Vs the x4, the pl6 seems to balance the batteries more accurately and faster. It never hurts to have more charger than what you need. Another decent charger to consider in your case would be the icharger 206. I bought one of those as well to do rx batteries in the event that my pl6 was occupied with the bigger stuff.

I also use the storage feature quite a bit on the pl6. I work offshore and one of the things I do the day before I leave is put all the batteries I used over my 3 weeks home back to storage charge. The pl6 blows through that task easily.

That's great info bro. Thanks for sharing.

Which para boards are you using with the PL 6 and which power supply?

 

[Bunky.F.Knuckle]

Mike, keep this in the back of your head when you parallel charge. When you have a cell degrading or out of balance, you wont see it. I spent several hours with 8 6S packs that my pops has, they were severely out of balance, because he parallel charged all the time. Once a month or dependent on how often you fly, charge your packs off the parallel board.

Which is mostly why I dont advocate parallel charging.

 

[pawnshopmike]

Mike, keep this in the back of your head when you parallel charge. When you have a cell degrading or out of balance, you wont see it. I spent several hours with 8 6S packs that my pops has, they were severely out of balance, because he parallel charged all the time. Once a month or dependent on how often you fly, charge your packs off the parallel board.

Which is mostly why I dont advocate parallel charging.

Thanks for the info Chris.

 

[ThePledge]

Mike, keep this in t
he back of your head when you parallel charge. When you have a cell degrading or out of balance, you wont see it. I spent several hours with 8 6S packs that my pops has, they were severely out of balance, because he parallel charged all the time. Once a month or dependent on how often you fly, charge your packs off the parallel board.

Which is mostly why I dont advocate parallel charging.

I don't think the parallel charging causes them to go out of balance. They just balance themselves so quickly you won't notice weak cells. Those big Cellpros have 1 amp balance circuits so they also balance quicker than most chargers. If you have e.g. 6 packs hooked up in parallel it will be almost totally regression to the mean between connected corresponding cells rather than the charger doing the balancing though.

It's a good idea to right down IR for each cell of each pack and check them individually once and a while.

I've had good luck with a server power supply, 24v 47amp on the Cellpro 6. http://feathermerchantrc.com/

 

[jhelber08]

That's great info bro. Thanks for sharing.

Which para boards are you using with the PL 6 and which power supply?

I actually ended up with 2 ec5 para boards, 1 is from buddy rc and the other from progressive rc. I also have one for deans which came from buddy rc and 2 for jst (for foamies) from progressive. I just got them depending on where I was ordering from at the time. Mine are just the basic ones without fuse protection.

As for power supply I'm using 2 HP 12v server supplies (Model: HP DPS-1200FB). Each power supply is good for 75A at 12V for a total of 1800 Watts at 24V. I bought the power supply already modified from buddyrc. I ended up having to separate them (and re solder the jumper in between) for them to be able to lay side by side in my case as opposed to stacked up. There was also a problem with one of the supplies not wanting to turn on and I found that the resistor they used to "trick" the supply to come on was shorting out against the case which that was a quick fix. I can't really complain though because they hooked me up with a good discount when I picked it up in person while on vacation up that way. They also had a new one ready to ship immediately when I emailed them about the problem, they seem like good folks to deal with.

From the pics, it looks like feathermerchantrc.com uses the same supplies on their most powerful offering as well. In any case though you can also find tons of how to's on rcgroups for many different power supplies. If I had it to do over I would have bought the same supplies for 30-40 a piece and did the mod myself. Here's the link I used to fix my problem http://www.rchelination.com/setting-hp-dps-1200fb-power-supply/

Bunky brings up a good point about parallel charging. I'm by no means an expert but I do take a few precautions when parallel charging. I always check and make sure the batteries are fairly close to the same charge level before starting. I also connect the batteries and let them sit for a couple of minutes to equalize before starting the charge. I also check them after the charge to make sure nothing funky happened and to date have not had any cells out of balance or anything like that.

One other thing about the pl6, I basically fully depleted one of my foamy packs to like 2.5V per cell and the pl6 recovered it. I accidentally left it hooked up to the parallel board after storage charging it and the little blinky led on that board sucked it down after a few days.

 

[pawnshopmike]

I don't think the parallel charging causes them to go out of balance. They just balance themselves so quickly you won't notice weak cells. Those big Cellpros have 1 amp balance circuits so they also balance quicker than most chargers. If you have e.g. 6 packs hooked up in parallel it will be almost totally regression to the mean between connected corresponding cells rather than the charger doing the balancing though.

It's a good idea to right down IR for each cell of each pack and check them individually once and a while.

I've had good luck with a server power supply, 24v 47amp on the Cellpro 6. http://feathermerchantrc.com/

Yet more good info. Thanks for sharing.

 

[pawnshopmike]

Thanks guys. I'm learning lots today.

 

[ThePledge]

Here's a good guide that covers parallel charging really well. It's good to understand what is happening so nothing get's overcharged or melted

http://www.tjinguytech.com/charging-how-tos/parallel-charging

If all you'll ever do is charge receiver packs a 250-300 watt 10-20 amp iCharger with a cheap/light 12v power supply is probably plenty with a parallel board. If you want to charge multiple battery types at once a multichannel might be the way to go.

Add up all your receiver packs of each type then multiply voltage times (total mah/1000). That's the wattage you'll need to charge them all at once at 1c on a parallel board. You'll also want to compare the amperage this would take which is (total mah/1000). For 2c charges just double the amperage.

If you want the option of charging big packs at some point to fly electric it's tough to argue with a 1000w+ charger on a 24v supply...watts per dollar get really cheap with the big ones.

 

[Bunky.F.Knuckle]

Parallel charging doesnt make them go out of balance. You are actually able to charge faster, in a sense. But it is the discharge that does.

The amount discharged, or amount remaining has alot to do with it as well. You can take 2 3S packs, for simplistic sake, 1 pack can be 11.5V, and the other can be 11.1V. Stick them on the charger as a 3S 2P pack, and the pack voltage will be 11.3V. Which is ok, but what about those cell voltages, that is what really matters. I consider anything over .05V out of balance. Some folks go for more, some for less.

Its all in how you want to treat the packs during the charge process.

Lately, I have been charging my 12S packs for my 700 heli in Async mode on my iChargers. It allows me to hammer the crap out of the pack to recharge. Im recharging my 5000s at 30A. Its almost 1100W of charge rate. It also helps in keeping the internal resistance low.