on my fancy confengeled charger under "PEAK" i have the option of 3mV/C to 20mV/C.
What is this and what should i do with it. the only thing this can charge is Ni-Mi and Ni-Cd.
Thanks in advance
spork
10-05-2007, 09:41 PM
I'm not going to swear this is true - but I think it is. mV/C means millivolts per cell. This is how your charger determines that the pack voltage has "peaked" and is therefore done charging.
At constant charging current, the pack voltage will continue to rise until the pack is fully charged. It will then dip slightly. How slightly? Well that's what this setting is for. You might get a small dip like 5 millivolts/cell on occassion before it's really completely charged. In this case a setting of 5mV/C on your charger would result in a false peak, and would terminate the charge too soon.
So the total peak voltage drop for the pack is related to the number of cells in the pack. If you have a 10 mV/C setting and 4 cells in series (parallel doesn't count), the charge will stop when it sees a 40 millivolt drop.
In my opinion, you want to shoot for the lowest setting that consistently gives you a full charge. If you find you're not getting a full charge, just bump this value up by 5 mV/C until you do.