11-11-2014, 10:41 PM
I tend to crash or suffer miscellaneous mechanical mishaps only on days when I've brought lots of charged lipos to the field. That leaves me with a sackful of charged batteries, and nothing but the puny 20 watt discharging capacity of my iCharger 206B to bring them all back down to storage (3.85V/cell) level.
It takes around an hour to discharge a 3S 2200mAh pack in that manner. Last Saturday I had 17 such packs with me. I went through 6 before my Trex 450 developed a strange tail wobble, which put an end to heli fun for the day.
Now, squeezing 11 hours of discharging into 6 hours before bedtime poses some serious logistical difficulties. Even worse, the only way the charger can bleed off all that energy is to heat itself up, and let its 40mm fan whirr itself to oblivion. It's slightly abusive to the charger, and that has always made me uneasy.
(With the iCharger line it's possible to add an external power resistor, but there are drawbacks which are "beyond the scope of this article".)
Enter the 150W $20 discharger from RCX:
http://www.myrcmart.com/rcx-3in1-battery...-4767.html
It uses three 50W halogen globes to handle discharging duties, which means a full 3S2200 pack is back down to storage voltage in minutes - about as long as it takes to fly it.
Here is what it looks like in action:
Needless to say, I forgot to take a photo during the pretty stage when the lights were all aglow
The unit came with a Deans plug. Being an XT60 aficionado, I decided to unsolder the Deans plug and replace it with an XT60 on a pigtail. This photo shows the location where the Deans plug was originally soldered:
Overall, I'm very pleased with this discharger, and I'd recommend it to anyone whose OCD makes it impossible to leave lipos charged overnight.
It's quite an accurate 2S-6S battery checker too. I verified its voltage readouts against a lab-grade instrument. It was always within 0.01V, which is very good.
It takes around an hour to discharge a 3S 2200mAh pack in that manner. Last Saturday I had 17 such packs with me. I went through 6 before my Trex 450 developed a strange tail wobble, which put an end to heli fun for the day.
Now, squeezing 11 hours of discharging into 6 hours before bedtime poses some serious logistical difficulties. Even worse, the only way the charger can bleed off all that energy is to heat itself up, and let its 40mm fan whirr itself to oblivion. It's slightly abusive to the charger, and that has always made me uneasy.
(With the iCharger line it's possible to add an external power resistor, but there are drawbacks which are "beyond the scope of this article".)
Enter the 150W $20 discharger from RCX:
http://www.myrcmart.com/rcx-3in1-battery...-4767.html
It uses three 50W halogen globes to handle discharging duties, which means a full 3S2200 pack is back down to storage voltage in minutes - about as long as it takes to fly it.
Here is what it looks like in action:
Needless to say, I forgot to take a photo during the pretty stage when the lights were all aglow
The unit came with a Deans plug. Being an XT60 aficionado, I decided to unsolder the Deans plug and replace it with an XT60 on a pigtail. This photo shows the location where the Deans plug was originally soldered:
Overall, I'm very pleased with this discharger, and I'd recommend it to anyone whose OCD makes it impossible to leave lipos charged overnight.
It's quite an accurate 2S-6S battery checker too. I verified its voltage readouts against a lab-grade instrument. It was always within 0.01V, which is very good.