I just got my new Orbit Microlader v6.2 in the mail today and I am having problems. First I had a new and fully charged 600 mAh NiCd Rx back so I thought I would discharge it and see what how it rated. There are two was to do that with this charger. One is the "automatic discharge" where it is supposed to discharge at a decreasing rate till it gets down to 100 mA. I have never heard of that before so I didn't use it. There is also the manual discharge, where you select the rate of discharge and it discharges till .9V per cell. I thought you were supposed to test rate at a constant rate of discharge so I used the manual method and more or less arbitrarily picked a 250 mA discharge current. About 2.5 hours later it finished and said I had 620 some odd mAh so that worked great. Then I thought I would try a high rate fast charge. I have heard 1.5C is a pretty good rate for NiCd's so I used the "easy charge" method at a 900 mA rate. With in 2 minutes of starting it said it was finished. I knew that wasn't right so I decided to try the delta peak method which chooses the charge rate automatically. It started at 300 mA and then when to 500 mA but again with in a few min of starting the charge it stooped and said the battery was bad, which I find hard to believe. So any advice would be great, thanks.
-- Chris W
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania