Cheapy Charger, anyone tried?

I ordered one of these Thunder AC6 chargers, the specs sound great, $55 for a balancing charger with leads, USB cable, software and runs from AC or DC. I read reviews on similar chargers and most of the reviewers liked them. Anyone here have one of these? If so, does it work well?

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I'm not promoting the product or store, the one I ordered was from a different store. Just sounded like a great buy if it works as I hope it will. I have a Triton but needed another charger and I like it having a built in power supply.

RogerN

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RogerN
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Our normal price:$199.95 Today's price:$54.95

I wonder why? Sounds to good to be true. You get what you pay for? mk

Reply to
MJKolodziej

I'm supposed to get one Friday, I'll try it out and see how (if) it works.

I saw a warning about the T6 overcharging some cells, I'll monitor it with my voltmeter when charging LiPo's.

RogerN

Reply to
RogerN

Sounds like it's the "normal price" that's being overcharged.

:)

Reply to
M-M

My Thunder AC6 Charger came in today and I've been playing with it a little bit. So far I've charged 3 NimH packs and on my 2nd Lipo pack. Both of the LiPo packs were already charged so I tested on them by selecting discharge or storage mode to run them down a little, then charged them back up. I put the software and driver CD in my laptop, installed the software, plugged the charger into the USB port, loaded the drivers, and it all worked.

On the NimH packs, I charged 2ea 4 Cell Rx packs at 1.6A and then I charged a 6 Cell car pack at 4A. On the default sensitivity, the charge terminated at around 0.05V below the peak. The charger never got warm charging these packs.

The LiPo's I tried were 3 cell 1050 packs that I already had charged. I discharged them a little bit and then charged to check the balance and final voltage. The charger showed 4.20V per cell and my Radio Shack Voltmeter showed 12.69V total and 4.23V per cell. That's within 1% but I'd like to find out if the error is in the meter or the charger. Some cheapy chargers similar to this have an adjustment where you hold a button down while you power up and it will let you adjust the voltage readings to your meter.

The software that comes with it is pretty basic, but it has more than I expected. You can choolse the graph you want to look at, Volt & Current, Volt & Temperature, Volt & Capacity, or voltage for each individual cell. The software also shows the settings for battery type, mode, temperature cutoff, mah cutoff, on time, and input volts. The sofware has a cursor that you can position anywhere along the plot and it will give you the digital readout for that position on the graph.

So far this charger seems great, now if it just continues to perform well I'll be satisfied. AC or DC Input, 0.1-5A charge, 0.1 to 1A discharge, USB cable, Software, comes with 5 charge cables and a temperature cable, plus USB cable and balance adapter board. For $55 and $4.95 shipping I'm quite happy with it so far.

RogerN

Reply to
RogerN

I tried another digital volt meter and verified that the voltage at each cell was a little on the high side. I found a review on an I-Max B6 charger and found out if you hold the START button and the DEC button while powering up, and continue to hold for 6 seconds, it will go into a trim menu. The trim is limited to +- 20 units but after trimming, I balance charged a 3 cell lipo and got 4.21V, 4.20V, 4.21V, much better than the 4.23 to 4.24 I got at first.

I'm pretty sure that these chargers are clones of Bantam chargers but at a fraction of the cost. Some link Bantam videos to show you how to use these chargers and some are saying the software comes up with Bantam charger drivers.

RogerN

Reply to
RogerN

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