Quote:
Originally Posted by Kos-Mos
To Scarecrow...
Just curious...
How does your charger decide if the pack connected is made from mini (2/3A) or from sub-C cells... best guess would be internal res... but still I have racing grade 2/3A packs that have lower res than most sub-C packs
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I honestly can't tell you Kos-Mos. What I do know is there is a general chipset for charging out there that most "Smart" (meaning NPT/Delta-v/# cell detectors) chargers use - not just mine, that have circuitry to sense and logic to calculate such things. What I have found from experience, owning several different chargers from manufacturers making many claims is that the best all around charger which requires no technical knowledge to use is the NPT Smart Charger which I sourced and currently sell. One of the reasons I started selling it was because most of my teammates were going through batteries like wildfire, including myself, not understanding battery technology at all, and we all commonly burned our batteries - most of us had the money to buy really Gucci chargers (I paid $300 for my fuzzy logic one back in an RC hobby shop in Scarborough) and it made no difference. I finally came across one of these ones and was blown away at the simplicity and speed of charge and the lack of heat generated during the charge process - and the extended life of my batteries. So it was first by experience as a player that I came across this charger. Then all my teammates wanted one. Then players who saw them wanted one. Pretty soon I had sold over 100 of them. Now its one of the more common chargers out there.
NPT Explained:
http://www.bbbastard.com/nptdetails.htm
TankDude: That paper is an interesting find, but, I find it hard to believe based on both my experience and also by the number of high end electronics manufacturers that use NPT, (including the US military) to condition mission critical and lifesaving batteries - funny enough even the AED and Defib battery circuitry on our fire rescue vehicles in town has battery conditioning using, in part, NPT technology - and thats NFPA standards which are lifesaving standards. So that paper contradicts a lot of what the higher end of the industry is doing. My feeling is that there is a vested interest at play there.
As for proof, I do know a little chemistry and when it comes to oxidation and the claims regarding using a negative pulse to degassify a battery are supported by the physics of the process. Also, from an evidence point of view, I can set both my NPT charger and my TLP chargers side by side and fast charge time is similar for both for the same battery, but I do find the TLP charger charges the batteries at a hotter (much hotter) temperature, and that is a bad thing.
Kos-Mos, I also contend that these TLP hand adjustable chargers are by and large a product for the RC car racing scene, where peaking your battery before that critical race can make all the difference to winning and racers look at batteries in a little more disposable mentality in RC car racing than they do in airsoft - ultimately a battery is a chemical construct that will degrade over time and use. How you treat it will dictate the length of life. Unlike airsoft, RC car racing is a sustained use of the battery whereas airsoft is a very short stop and go, relying more on a battery's short surge performance than its sustained run time. As such in airsoft its possible to stretch a battery's life longer because you're not heating the crap out of it during sustained discharge. Finally, battery life is measured in charge/discharge cycles. Unless you're dealing with memory or performance issues, cycling your battery uses up its life and should be minimized where possible. I talk to some people who don't realize this and computer cycle their batteries after every game and wonder why they only get half a season out of their batteries. I've got some batteries that are over 3 years old and still working great - a testimony I think to those NPT chargers.
NPT is not something I developed, but its something I've championed with my product line for over 3 years now because I was so impressed with the results as a player who played often twice to three times a week (when I was hosting at Deadlands I held Tuesday, Thursday and weekend games each week during the summer), so I am talking from experience as well as having done research on the subject. Also when I started selling NPT chargers, I was one of the only ones who made the distinction and promoted them over straight peak chargers - now many other airsoft retailers have picked it up including those on the internet.