14500 AW Battery Charger?

[Hobbes]

Looking for a 14500 aw charger, anyone have a recommendation?

 

[9Ring]

Battery Junction.

Amazon has a nifty mulitchrger that chargers many Li Ion batteries including the 14500
Trustfire multifunction charger.

 

[jacques]

You may try for wagawoo those are known for various types of battery chargers like medical chargers, marine chargers, industrial chargers and many more.

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

I just ordered one of these a few days ago;

$26.90 NiteCore I4 Lithium Li-ion Ni-MH Ni-Cd Smart Battery Charger - with car cigarette power adapter at FastTech - Worldwide Free Shipping

If you need one faster;

Ultrafire WF-139 Charger for 14500 / 17500 / 18500 / 18650 / RCR123 3.7 volt Lithium Battery Charger

 

[grainde]

Ultrafire WF-139 Charger for 14500 / 17500 / 18500 / 18650 / RCR123 3.7 volt Lithium Battery Charger

Yup as Infinitus said the WF139 is an option. I have this charger and it works well for all my batteries including 14500's (and 16340's - with a spacer). Just be careful when charging low internal resistance batteries like AW IMR or the new panasonics, as they can get slightly over charged. I have often found my AW's at 4.26 and even once 4.29 V. So just keep an eye on them. :beer:

 

[sinner]

That's alarming , with these kind of features one should not recommend them. And that's the only reason ultracrap xxxfire products are not something you should depend on..

@Grainde: How did you manage the overcharging situation, I mean did you discharged them till they reach 4.1999V or just let them be.. I dont think this is safe to charge them over 4.25V because they will most likely explode or leak out..

P.S: Not saying IE didnot help you out but you should be better off with a proper smart charger like B10 or similar..
I used to have one Li-po charger but not anymore so i charge them with a PSU @4.19V and charge them until the current tranfer rate falls to 10~20mA.

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

I haven't had any trouble with the chargers ordered from Lighthound.

Also AW IMR batteries in particular are very resilient. You would have to put them through a lot more abuse before worrying.

 

[Blord]

I use different chargers for my li-ion batteries. I treat all the 3.7V batteries the same, including the 14500.

For fast and heavy charge I use the bench PSU.
For analytic charge I use the IMAX B6 charger.
For normal and multiple batteries I use the generic multi chargers, like the WF-188.

 

[grainde]

@Grainde: How did you manage the overcharging situation, I mean did you discharged them till they reach 4.1999V or just let them be.. I don't think this is safe to charge them over 4.25V because they will most likely explode or leak out..

I just carefully put them in a flashlight and let them run for a few mins to bring the charge back down. Li Mn bats are a lot safer than Li Co based bats, but I wouldn't store them at that charge! The charger works fine with most other batteries I have stopping at 4.19 - 4.2 V. It's simply due to the low resistance of the better batteries. The batteries still work fine and I haven't noticed any loss of capacity (actually checked it with a linear regulator discharging on a heatsinked test load over a couple of hours and had near full capacity)

Now I just keep a very close eye on the charging and test regularly with the DMM.

 

[grainde]

Apologies for the double post, but Id like to draw attention to this...

Just a heads up my WF-139 charger just went pop! Well actually bang and it tripped the circuit breaker in the house. I opened it up and the board inside was burnt and charred around the 240 V input socket.

Anyway, Im now considering a better quality charger...These are the ones I came up with. Does anyone have any opinions of (or experience with) them?

SYSMAX/Nitecore Intellicharge i4 Li-Ion Ni-Cd Ni-MH 4-Channel Smart Battery Charger

**NEW** XTAR SP2, 2-bay Li-ion Charger

I might also consider the WF-188, IF its considered safer and more reliable than the 139?:beer:

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

I have one of those Nitecore I4 on the way right now, I'll report back once I get it.

Your experience with the wf139 has me a bit worried...

 

[grainde]

I have one of those Nitecore I4 on the way right now, I'll report back once I get it.

Your experience with the wf139 has me a bit worried...

Yeah me too! Ill post a pic of the burnt board tomorrow maybe someone knows what went wrong?

Would definitely like to hear your opinion on the I4, when it arrives.:thanks::beer:

Edit: Pics...

 

[LarryDFW]

grainde;

From the looks of your board,

the diode bridge shorted, creating a temporary short across the line.

It is more likely on 230 VAC mains with plug-in supplies.

LarryDFW

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

Would definitely like to hear your opinion on the I4, when it arrives.:thanks::beer:

Got it saturday. Used it to charge and top off about 30 batteries since... everything ranging from 10440 to 18650.

It's definitely a big step over the wf139's and such.

Couple of minor issues... it's a bit of a pain in the butt to put 10440's in it. Also you have to be careful to have at least two 10440 or smaller batteries in it, and charging.

For shorter batteries, 16340 for example, I still end up using a small spacer because the spring at that point has almost no tension, so no good contact is made. IMO this is preferably vs the too strong springs in some chargers.


One cosmetic problem... one indicator LED, out of 12, turned a slight orange, as opposed to the others which are still yellow.

It does charge to 4.2 on the dot, and it does seem to stop charging at that point.

Overall, I'm probably going to end up getting one more, to be able to charge 8 batteries at a time. Either that, or the 6x batteries xstar. That one is a bit more pricey though.

 

[Marco Polo]

Looks like I will be getting some IMR cells to use with my HL405, but I'm still not 100% clear on charging requirements. Can I use the same charger that I use for my cobalt chemistry 16340's, or should I purchase a separate unit for the IMR cells? The charger in question came with the 16340's that I purchased from Orbtronic's website.

Apologies if this is a noobish question, rather look like a newb than blow up my charger/laser/house...

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

Generally speaking, it's ok to use the same charger meant for ICR as for IMR.

The problem is many cheaper chargers will overcharge batteries past 4.2v... I actually had the opposite problem with my cheaper chargers, they always stopped short of 4.2V.

What charger do you have from orbtronic?

Personally I really don't regret spending ~$25 on a new better charger, and there are other much better chargers out there.