R/C charger balancers

[rajuncajun]

Hi, had my first triton jr go up in smoke last night about an hour into discharging a stick at .6A (5W max for the triton jr). It looks like it was a surface mount resistor on the PCB (probably the main discharge power sink) that burned. Nothing else looks hot but it's ever so slightly brown around that resistor. Lots of smoke came out of the box so I'm surprised nothing looks more obviously burnt. I still have another unit that's not under warranty, I may try and retrofit a heatsink of some kind onto this resistor on that unit to prolong its life. They were running in a 60 deg F room and I even had a small fan blowing onto them. Too bad, they seem well-engineered other than this fatal flaw.

I know people are using the Superbrain (859 model?), what other units seem to be reliable? I ordered a Turnigy Accucel-6 that was pretty cheap (less than $40) and has a cooling fan - I'm hesitant to spend the > $150 for the superbrain (not to mention buying several) since I don't plan to rebuild another pack for quite some time. The consequence is I'll be limited to charging/discharging more slowly but I don't see why this won't still identify weak sticks with decreased capacity - albeit under less extreme than than real world conditions of high-current.

I won't be buying another triton jr, they're going for about $75 bucks plus shipping and there several chargers with identical specs to be had for < $50.

What other R/C chargers have people tried?

[E27006]

Robitronic Overloader (Blue case) max 8 Amp Charge/ 20 Amp Discharge

Robitronic Overloader 2 (Red case). max 10 amp Charge/20 Amp Discharge

They run off DC 12V so you need to budget for a mains power supply.

I think they are sold under other names.

When cycling sticks select 10 amp discharge settings and 8 or 10 amps for charging

[MN Driver]

I have a Turnigy Accucel-8. Only discharges at 25 watts so it takes some time to drain a stick but can charge at 150 watts which is faster than I want it to so I don't use its full power. If I was able to change my decision before buying the Accucel-8, I would have gotten something more powerful but I'm pretty much done with what I need one of these for at the moment. I built a decent pack with 9 sticks to run an electric lawn mower at about 65 volts. Problem is now that the cells have been out of mowing season, I'll have to cycle the sticks again to get them ready again, memory issues and they have a fair bit of self-discharge to them since I'm using a pack built using rejected cells. It works well and its better than ungumming the carb after forgetting to put fuel stabilizer in the fuel of a gas mower when your state puts ethanol in the gas.

[rajuncajun]

Thanks for the suggestions. It looks like I will be getting a replacement triton jr under warranty, so I might just try and epoxy a transistor heat sink onto the surface mount discharge resistor. 5W is pretty painfully slow to discharge, but I'll have 2 triton jr's and the accucel 6 so working in parallel shouldn't be too bad.

Luckily I'm not in a hurry, the civic hasn't thrown the P1449 again since resetting the code a couple weeks ago so it should be able to limp along a while more, also it runs fine w/out IMA just with slightly worse fuel economy and power.

[Mike Dabrowski 2000]

Just measure the resistor value, and replace it with a higher wattage resistor of the same value, to end any overheating issues.

[3-Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Mike Dabrowski 2000

Just measure the resistor value, and replace it with a higher wattage resistor of the same value, to end any overheating issues.

Thanks Mike. I was thinking exactly the same thing as I read the comments.

No sense throwing out a perfectly good unit just because of an undersized resistor.

Jim.

[Hybrid-Battery-Repair]

Please note that those discharge amperages are for Sub-C cells, not D. I've blown half a dozen Duratrax ICE and Team Checkpoint TC-1030 chargers. The overloader is the same unit with the overloader2 being an upgraded model. I would not exceed 15 amps discharge.

Originally Posted by E27006

Robitronic Overloader (Blue case) max 8 Amp Charge/ 20 Amp Discharge

Robitronic Overloader 2 (Red case). max 10 amp Charge/20 Amp Discharge

They run off DC 12V so you need to budget for a mains power supply.

I think they are sold under other names.

When cycling sticks select 10 amp discharge settings and 8 or 10 amps for charging

[rajuncajun]

Update - I cooked 2 triton jr chargers, both failed during the discharge process. I got one fixed under warranty and ebayed the other one. The 1 ohm resistor on that unit tested good but something else must have been wrong. The PCB was too tight for me to want to mess with troubleshooting any more.

After that I got 2 of the Turnigy Accucel 6 units for $40 each (shipped) from Hong Kong (Hobby King) and they've been performing flawlessly for much longer than either of the triton units (fingers crossed). They do have a tiny little cooling fan, but I think the circuit's completely different which probably explains their tenacity more than the mini fan. I had small fan blowing directly on the resistor of the tritons when they failed, and it was only about 65 deg F in my workshop. Maybe OK for charging but don't use them to discharge batteries unless you want them to break.

Most importantly, I got the civic salvage pack tested. There are clearly 4 sticks with less than 4.5 AH capacity, the others are all 4.5-5 AH. Now I'll just pull the other pack out of the car, test until I get 4 good sticks, pop them in the salvage pack, grid charge it, and put it back in the car.

Interestingly the IMA light went off on its own without clearing the codes or anything. It still has pretty pathetic capacity though so a rebuilt pack should help.

[Eli]

So far I've had good luck with the MRC Superbrain 989.