Bob Vaughan Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 Having just switched on my newish I Charger unit I saw a larg-ish puff of blue smoke coming out of the input lead area. Enquiries with an R\C electronics repairer reveal that it might not economically viable to repair ie spares will be difficult to source outside of China, ..............so it probably means a new charger. Ive only just taken to electrics and have a Sebart Sukhoi 50e size requiring 2 x 4000mah 6S's to be charged twice a week-ish so can anyone reccommend a decent sub £150 - £100 charger to do that job please? Many thanks Bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Berriman Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 Have a look on BMFA pages someone from Ripmax selling various chargers at reasonable prices Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piers Bowlan Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 Bob, if your iCharger is 'newish' can you not get a replacement/refund from the supplier? Have you taken a look at Overlander's website, for example here and here, they have been in the E-Flight business a long time. Edited By Piers Bowlan on 30/01/2019 14:51:17 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Hammond Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 I have just ordered a charger from Banggood for about £18 just as a spare,everything I v,e bought from them has been fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geoff S Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 Even the highest quality equipment can fail. I've been using an iCharger 308 duo for several years with no problems and I think there are several users on here. I bought mine from Nexus who seem to be a reliable supplier of model related goods. If yours is, as you say, newish, then the first step is to contact the supplier. iChargers are not cheap (mine was £200) and are considered to be amongst the best on the market. My other charger is a Graupner 16 which has also seen regular trouble free service for 7 or 8 years. Sadly, repair is difficult for a lot of modern electronic equipment because of a combination of no service data and no spare parts but, on the other hand, it's more reliable in general. Going back to my teenage repairing days, the main trouble was failed thermionic valves Geoff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Lee Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 I've been pleased with my ISDT D2 dual charger for the last 12 months or so, trouble free after 355 charging cycles. About £110 from UK outlets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nigel R Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 "requiring 2 x 4000mah 6S's to be charged twice a week-ish" How quick do you want them charged? In the £100 region - I'm using a Hobbyking Reaktor 300W, it will charge at 13A into a 6S lipo, £56. DC only, so it needs an external power brick. There is a matching Reaktor 350W power supply, £47. I've been using them the past year without any problems on my 4 cell lipos - usually 4-6 x 4S2200 in parallel, or 3 or 4 x 4S5000 also in parallel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Attilio Rausse Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 the ichargers and copies seem to have a fatal flaw in that you must not power up the charger with the batteries already plugged in, I did this twice, both times the charger was replaced f.o.c. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Attilio Rausse Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 HK - Turnigy reaktor 20A for about £52 incredible vfm. just just seen Nigelr post would agree Edited By Attilio Rausse on 30/01/2019 16:35:15 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Sharples Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 What about this it will charge 4 lipos at the same time 4 x 100watt output, mains powered, £144.00p Link to web site. Link G.T. Power X4 Pro Quad 4x 100W Output (Dual Input), Fully Featured Digital Intelligent Multifunctional Balancing Charger/Discharger/Cycler LiPo, Li-lo, Li-Fe (A123M1), Li-HV Ni-Cd, Ni-MH, Pb (Lead Acid) Edited By Keith Sharples on 30/01/2019 18:34:14 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Collinson Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 +1 for Keith above, 4Max quad, as a similar post about a week ago (I didn’t start it). 4 quite dissimilar batteries, simultaneously; ac/dc ( to coin a phrase); UK supplier of repute, so the Chinese don’t get all of the margin. Best single bit of kit I have bought in 3 years since returning. BTC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Former Member Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 [This posting has been removed] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonathan M Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 I bought the GT Power X4 Pro Quod last week. Very good bit of kit, quick and easy to start using, and brilliant to handle four 4s 4250 LiPos in one go. Good value as supplied with built-in mains power, but also has a port on the back for 11-18v DC supply. All the leads and balancing boards supplied, plus a bundle of usual adaptors - although note that two of the leads have Deans connectors and the other two have XT60 connectors, so you'll need to solder whichever connector of your choice to the other two leads or, if you prefer XT90, bullets, etc, to all four. (I've got lots of Deans on lower-voltage LiPos, so I'm going to make up a second set of four leads for XT90 for the big 'uns.) As you cycle between the four outputs on the screen, you can select different battery types, voltages, charge-rates, etc for each output. It'll do a 'storage charge' (back up, or down) to a pre-determined level for each battery type, which you can't change: i.e. if you want to store your LiPos at say 3.85v per cell rather than 3.75 then you can't. (One dodge is to got to 3.75 then charge as normal but only for 5-10mins, or whatever you find out by experimenting with a timer.) The other thing that I found limiting is that the actual discharge rate is (i) limited to a max of 1.0C, but (ii) depending on what battery you're actually discharging, this could be a lot lower (displayed on screen); see Page 11 of the Manual for an illustration. According to George all chargers have this limitation. Hope this helps. Edited By Jonathan M on 30/01/2019 19:29:59 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Smitheman Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 My i charger 108 also smoked. Twice. The first time I think that the croc clip from the leisure battery slipped off whilst charging a 6s lipo. A genius club mate replaced several i.c. chips and it worked again for years. Sadly due to a dodgy plug whilst charging a nimh (my fault) the output shorted; the charger made an agonised scream and a LOT of smoke came out. What alarmed me after the first less obvious failure was that it tried to unbalance the lipo. This could have been dangerous. I now use an Revolectrix PL6 ? which is absolutely the bees knees. Edited By Charles Smitheman on 01/02/2019 15:27:35 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlyinBrian Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 The multi output chargers are good until they fail! then you have no chargers at all. After my quad output jobbie quit on me I bought two Hobbyking 200W units for about half the price of a four output charger. - If one fails I still have a charger Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Hess Posted February 2, 2019 Share Posted February 2, 2019 Smoke ftoma charger normally means that you conne ted your battery the wrong way round, so make sure you check your battery before connecting it to anything else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piers Bowlan Posted February 2, 2019 Share Posted February 2, 2019 Posted by FlyinBrian on 01/02/2019 16:28:40: The multi output chargers are good until they fail! then you have no chargers at all. After my quad output jobbie quit on me I bought two Hobbyking 200W units for about half the price of a four output charger. - If one fails I still have a charger I bought a Reaktor Quadkore from Hobbyking in their January sale as I wanted a multi-charger. The only thing that bothered me when I clicked 'buy', was the thought that a single failure could render the whole thing u/s. So far so good! What bothered me when it arrived was that it was plastered with stickers and dire warnings not to switch it 'on' with a LiPo connected . I suspect this might release the 'magic blue smoke' from the machine but so far I have resisted and all is well . You would think that they could fit the thing with a circuit breaker or fuse to mitigate one having a 'senior moment' but then maybe they would sell less chargers that way! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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