Charger help - newbie a bit lost
 

After some advice or possibly a link to assist in what settings I should be programming into my charger - I have no idea what the features are all about , what they mean or what the diference is if I change settings

What do things such as those listed below mean?

1. Cycle,
2. Cycle Delay Time
3. Discharge Current (I do know what this means but don't know the preffered setting)
4. Peak Sensitivity
5. Charge Current ( again, I know what this means but don't know the preffered setting)
6. Cycling (periodic?)
7. Charge settings - Normal, Mega Flex, step & clock
8. Repeak Delay

Batteries are Orion Rocket Packs 5100 NiMH

Team Orion Advantage Advance charger

Thanks in advance

Glen

Anyone any advice please ?

Cycling will discharge, charge and discharge your cells, you then balance on a balancer, this helps condition the cells and keeps them charging as balanced as possible.

Repeak delay would wait for say 5 mins once your finished charging and then tops them up again, you wont want this on.

Peak sensitivity is more than likely going to be a manual setting for what voltage the charging stops at, although i don't know as ive never used this charger.

The rest are charger specific, although on other chargers you always use normal charging for NIMH's as the other types are usually for nicads.

1 Cycle as described by southwell. You should really buy a balancing/discharge tray rather than use this function, your batteries will be more equall.
2Cycle delay the time you set the charger to wait between cycles (not needed)
3 If you do use the charger to discharge set it to 10 amps, but as said trays are better.
4 Peak sensitivity As the batteries are charged they reach their peak and drop off a little, You charger will detect fluctuations so set it at no more than 5mV/cell as on page 9 of your inst book. Any higher will damage your batteries.
5 Charge current. Basic rule of thumb charge at 1c so with your 5100mah batteries set the charge rate to no more than 5.1 amps. That will take 1 hour to charge from flat. If you had 3300mah batteries 3.3 amps would be the charge rate and so on.
6 Cycling periodically Use this to bring old batteries that have not been used for a while back to condition.
7 Gharge setting Just use the normal setting
8 Repeak delay as des by southwell.
If you decide to buy a discharge tray make sure you dont let the cells drop below 0.9v per cell. You should be able to get one if you ask in the wanted section.
Also you will need more than one set of batteries. Nihm dont like to be charged more than twice a day or less than at least 1 hour from last use to keep them in good order.

I believe the 'Orion Rocket Packs 5100 NiMH' are shrink stick packs so balancing/dischargeing is not an option, just charge em and run em, if they have tamiya plastic connectors you may want to think about changing them for something that can take a bit more power - deans or 4mm tubes.

I would definatly change the connecters as I melted a Tamiya connecter with a LRP Hyper Pack 4200 NiMH! I even noticed that the batteries had more punch when I changed to Deans Plugs.

Thanks chaps, its becoming much clearer :) I will set up and give it a whirl :thumbsup: