The In's and Out's of non-LiPo Smart Charging

[jesus_freak]

Hey All! I've been re-familiarizing myself with the forums... getting pumped about attending the Fort Prince game in two days, even shooting out some PM's on the WTS thread. So, I thought the time was right to prompt some thoughtful discussion and see what comes of it.

Before Fulda this year, me and Zion decided to make the leap into the smart charger world. We drove by our local hobby shop (the great escape) and he picked up the intellect ICE and I grabbed the Venom mostly because those were the only two they had, we had no idea what we were doing, and apparently blowing $100 that day wasn't a big deal in our pre-fulda madness. (In hindsight, I'm quite jealous of the ICE... if you visit the aforementioned link you'll see its quite the beastly little charger.) We used them, with much manual consultation, to charge all of our batteries before and during the game, and have been using them since.

Then, the unthinkable. My Intellect 2000mah 9.6v battery that fits so nicely into my m733 foregrip stopped working. And while the battery is about 3 years old, and I bought it used on the forum-that-shant-be-named, so it could very well be due time that it craps out on me... but I can't help but feel responsible... it only charges to a fraction of it's original capacity, and even then won't turn a gun over once. *le sigh*

So within the NiMh/NiCd world there seems to be a fairly low amount of variables/parameters that go into charging a battery, and yet a massive void of knowledge or real data to back up the random claims I hear about them. I spent most of the last two days trying to find info, but I've pretty much come out empty handed, save a few basic ideas scrounged together from random manuals and RC forums.

I understand these to be the basic necessary parameters

Voltage. (1.2v/cell)
Capacity. (in Mah) ('C' rating is Mah/1000)
Charge Current in Amps (typically 1C~2C's is a safe fast charge)
Discharge Current (I'm a bit in the dark on what's a good idea and what's not here)
Delta Peak normally around 7mV/C for NiMh and 12mV/C for NiCd

but past that, I'm pretty clueless. I constantly get batteries only charging to 50% of their C, and more specifically, even when setting the Delta Peak of my aforementioned NiMh battery to 14mV/C, it still only charged to 812mah out of 2000.

So... Due to the vast lack of any good discussion going on elsewhere in the interwebz world, I thought it might be worth bringing up here and seeing what information comes out of it! therefore...

What are your smart charging practices and traditions? what gear are you workin with? what failures have you learned from? What did I straight up miss? please, add good thoughts and save the bad ones for somewhere else. =]

Also, I know the temptation will be to include discussion of the $30 "Universal Smart Charger" but please resist. "plug and play" chargers really aren't the issue here because they require no tinkering, and give you no information in return. (hence, me no gusta.) Airsoft is about tinkering and playing and learning!

[SteevoLS]

You're running into the memory effect on those batteries that are holding a reduced charge.

I switched to lipos within 6 months of starting airsoft. They've been around for ages in the RC world, and are superior to NiMHs and NiCDs in nearly every way (if not EVERY way). I discovered that I could buy a true universal smart charger AND a few batteries for less than most airsoft-branded NiMH/NiCD smart chargers end up costing.

If your battery died anyway, it might not be a bad time to switch. Hobbyking.com, for example, sells numerous programmable chargers (NiMH, NiCD, LiPo, LiFePo, LiOn... all from one charger) for $20-30ish and also have a very complete line of airsoft-tailored lipos. A solid replacement for your M733 handguard battery would probably be in the neighborhood of $15.

[jesus_freak]

I certainly am considering the switch to LiPo's... or maybe better to say I know I am going to switch, I'm just waiting a couple of weeks for the income to match with the spending. =]

BUT, I was honestly more interested in hearing from the experienced players about the subject, rather than solving my own problem. (I already have another battery at my doorstep waiting for me to get home from work)

I guess it could simply be an obsolete topic if all of the players experienced enough to tinker with a smart charger simply move straight to LiPos!