Quote:
Originally Posted by Eddie168
Yea it is a brilliant charger but i am not quite understand what's different between those different charge mode like mega flex, step charge bla bla bla, cause i normally use normal charging mode and i am not sure what is peak sensitivity is any idea? and yea the beep noise is so annoying that's why i turn it off as well
|
Here is my understanding of the charge modes (this might not be 100% correct please correct me anyone...):
Megaflex: By discharging the battery briefly during periods of charging the "megaflex" mode frees gas bubbles that build up in the battery these gas bubbles build up on the internal contacts and increase the resistance so by removing them you decrease the resistance making the battery charge better and not get as hot while charging - in short it's supposed to be a brilliant thing and you should use it if you have it! - Incidentally a friend of mine told me that he thought megaflex was only for NiCad and not for NiMH cells, but I have my charger set to NiMH and it still has the option so I'm assuming it's ok for them...
Stepped Charging: The reason for the stepped charging is that if you have got say 3700mah cells you are supposed to charge them at a maximum of 3.7Amps (for 3300 it would be 3.3A or 4200 it would be 4.2A), at that or under that you should get a good charge into them and they should last reasonably when you use them. However if you charge them higher than that then the batteries will be more "punchy" but will not have as long duration (this is ok because 3700 have more than enough for one round anyway). The higher you go the punchier performance you get, however also the higher you go the more likely the battery is to explode while you are charging it!
"peak sensitivity": basically a 3700mah cell can only hold 3700mah of power, once it has stored as much as it can (which in reality will be slightly less than 3700) further charging on the cell instead of increasing the voltage simply causes heat and actually a slight decrease of the voltage. By looking for this decrease the charger can tell when the battery is actually full or "peaked" the amount of decrease before the cell is considered to have peaked is the "peak sensitivity" - if you have this too low, then your charger might get a "false positive" reading (if the voltage drops due to gas buildup or some other reason during charging) and stop charging before the cell is full but if you have it too high then the charger will not realise when the cell is full and will keep charging it and this may actually cause the cell to explode! The step charging allows you to use the dangerous really high speed charging for the initial period of the charge but then reduce down to a sensible charging speed at a point when you think the battery is nearing it's maximum charge, i.e. charge at 5.5A for 2000Mah then 3.7A for the next 1700Mah. The problem with peak sensitivity is that it's measuring the whole pack, so if it's say 5mv per cell what it's actually looking for is a 5*6=30mv drop across the whole pack before assuming it's complete. The problem is that if you don't have matched cells and 1 is charged but the other 5 are not that one might be getting dangerously overcharged. For that reason the orion automatically cuts off when it reaches the capacity you have specified, i.e. 3700mah irrespective of whether the peak has been detected or not. This is why some people actually set their orions to a little extra, say 3900mah to make sure that the cells actually peak (but this is a little dangerous!).