CELLPRO 4S CHARGER - Excellent..!

[retiredVTT]

Cudos to FMA for the Cellpro 4S Lipo/A123 Charger. And just like anything GOOD, you wanna get it now because it's likely to disappear shortly!
Go figure..!
http://www.fmadirect.com/Detail.htm?ite ... section=45

This charger originally sold for $74.95 plus another $10. for the correct adapter for your brand of lipo.
Recently a deal was available..buy one at regular price get second for 1/2 price. Not bad, I took advantage and got one.
Now, the killer deal for this charger is a price of $49.95
Why the reduced price..well, another model is out that does what this one does and also does NiCads and NiMh cells, and costs $74.95
But who uses NiCads and NiMh cells..? Yeah I know, a few still do.

Anyway,,,the reason for this thread is because of what this charger can do ..or at least what I THINK it can do..!

Tonight I took a 4 cell lipo pack of 3650mah size that for all practical purposes was dead as it had been in my STUBBY for 29 DAYS on top of a tower in Burnside through two rain storms, then it was subjected to a 131 foot fall from the tower and ejected through the bottom of the plane.
Voltage readings were something like 1.6, 0.42. 2.3, 0.30 ...about 4.5 vts total.
I tried charging it on the Cellpro and it kept saying (on it's LCD display) that it was trying to "Restore" the pack but after eight trys it would shut down. I had to connect another lipo pack with jumpers to the damaged pack and keep it connected for 10 minutes to raise the overall pack voltage to around 11 volts.
Then when I reconnected it to the Cellpro, the charger immediately goes into "Restore" mode and keeps the charge current to 50ma while tackling the job of balancing the cells. The cells read something like 3.37, 3.34, 2.67, 2.42 however after 30 minutes I was stunned to see all four cells reading 3.67 volts and the charger still charging at a low amperage of 68ma. The percentage of charge in the entire pack now read 4%.
The charger will likely work for hours to get this pack back up to full charge, and I'm not ready to say that the pack will recover. But I am supremely impressed with it's ability to try and fix the pack.

The other thing that this charger does so well is to bring a normal pack back up in about half the time we are used to....say 30 minutes instead of an hour. You can set it for a charge rate of 2C (or 3C). When on 2C, with a 2200mah pack it will start out at a moderate rate of maybe one amp but eight minutes later it's blazing along at 3.5 amps, then as the pack reaches 90% full the current drops down below one amp.

That feature alone makes it a favorite charger at the field...but with this "Restore Mode" it becomes a top of the line product, IMO..!

Oh Yes, it also charges and balances A123 packs, so long as they have the balance nodes attached.

NEXT DAY EDIT..I put the pack on a 8 amp discharge for 15 minutes and pulled 1500mah out of it and it was getting warm. Initally the 14.5 voltage dropped to 12.3 and stayed there for 14 minutes then started slipping to around 10.5 so I stopped the discharge. I'll recharge it and try another discharge. I'm not putting a lot of faith in the pack after the torture it's gone through.

Bill

[Ghost Flyer]

Thanks, Bill, for the great post! Everyone seems to be using these Cellpro chargers. I'm going to order the newer multi4 today. My main reason for getting it is because I plan on dabbling in night flying at some point, and thought the back-light LCD might be handy. I also like the idea of being able store settings for up to 25 different batteries, kind of like model memory on the tx, but then again, I really don't know enough to know how useful that would be.

I do know this, though. I know enough to know that I don't know much yet...lol I really do appreciate the wisdom that you and everyone else has in this club and how willing everyone has been to help me along... This hobby is fairly complicated, once you dive into it. All I know is, one day, while at a toy store in the US, I saw a $30 plane in a box and thought it would be fun to fly it.. Who knew I'd end up here??!! LOL

Any chance you could post the picture of your workbench that you mentioned? I'm looking for some ideas on building one.

Cheers,
Andrew