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- Jul 4, 2008
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I decided to get some supplies on Thursday and found a store that carried a few lipo chargers.
The store Bythegun (detonator), is an airsoft store with actually a pretty good reputation among airsoft enthusiats so it is unlikely they knew they were selling
a knock off charger.
Anyways.. I gave it a go at home to play with.
The first thing I noticed is that there was no hologram on the bottom of the charger and the box didn't match what I was seeing online about it...
I tried charging a old 2200mAh Samsung 18650 22A battery, and all seemed well. The battery was charged in 53min.23sec... my charge setting was 1A at 4.2Vdc.. hmm something wasn't right at all...
So I decided to measure the cell voltage directly.. 3.94V...
What was going on here??? How could this charger be undercharging my
battery. Was my Hioki True RMS DMM packing it in..
I then decided to try a discharge (store mode) on some old 2600mAh Tenergy
(rebranded Samsung batteries) in series. This turned out to be a very very bad idea... within 3 minutes my charger was smelling of overheated electronics. The charger cables were even starting to become slightly warm. The case of the unit was FAR TOO HOT! Well over what I'd consider to be normal for this small a charger. Even the paint was starting to soften. Had I been using this for any longer I'm certain there would have been a fire.
I immediately unplugged the unit and fired off an email to iMAXRC...
Within a few hours they immediately confirmed my fears and suggested to return the item. Verified fake.
I decided to head online and have a look at more reports of these chargers all having their voltages way out of wack, causing fires and lipo explosions...
Sure enough this particular brand of (iMax) chargers had been copied and 10,000's of them ended up on ebay, Amazon, and in S.Korea, and on store shelves even in the USA and Canada over the past 6/5 years.
it's been a big enough problem that the company finally changed it's colour and the design of the unit.
I have since found a decent supplier locally of "authentic" chargers, namely the iMax B606-Pro which can be found online for about $60-80. Here in ROK you're paying 10% VAT on the top.
So word of warning to those who are contemplating a charger for multiple cells and or discharging cells for storage... check the back of the unit to see if there are any verification stickers or scratch-able s/n sticker.
If you buy one of these fakes you'll be risking more than just a simple malfunction but a serious risk of an explosion or loss of property, i.e. your house or office!!
As you can see in the last pic that the charger felt like reading an erroneous voltage. It was indicating 4.20V but actually putting out 4.24-4.4V and ranging all over the place.
The fake charger was returned without issue to the store in pic1 along with a copy of the warning email from the company to me.
I was refunded without any questions.
The store Bythegun (detonator), is an airsoft store with actually a pretty good reputation among airsoft enthusiats so it is unlikely they knew they were selling
a knock off charger.
Anyways.. I gave it a go at home to play with.
The first thing I noticed is that there was no hologram on the bottom of the charger and the box didn't match what I was seeing online about it...
I tried charging a old 2200mAh Samsung 18650 22A battery, and all seemed well. The battery was charged in 53min.23sec... my charge setting was 1A at 4.2Vdc.. hmm something wasn't right at all...
So I decided to measure the cell voltage directly.. 3.94V...
What was going on here??? How could this charger be undercharging my
battery. Was my Hioki True RMS DMM packing it in..
I then decided to try a discharge (store mode) on some old 2600mAh Tenergy
(rebranded Samsung batteries) in series. This turned out to be a very very bad idea... within 3 minutes my charger was smelling of overheated electronics. The charger cables were even starting to become slightly warm. The case of the unit was FAR TOO HOT! Well over what I'd consider to be normal for this small a charger. Even the paint was starting to soften. Had I been using this for any longer I'm certain there would have been a fire.
I immediately unplugged the unit and fired off an email to iMAXRC...
Within a few hours they immediately confirmed my fears and suggested to return the item. Verified fake.
I decided to head online and have a look at more reports of these chargers all having their voltages way out of wack, causing fires and lipo explosions...
Sure enough this particular brand of (iMax) chargers had been copied and 10,000's of them ended up on ebay, Amazon, and in S.Korea, and on store shelves even in the USA and Canada over the past 6/5 years.
it's been a big enough problem that the company finally changed it's colour and the design of the unit.
I have since found a decent supplier locally of "authentic" chargers, namely the iMax B606-Pro which can be found online for about $60-80. Here in ROK you're paying 10% VAT on the top.
So word of warning to those who are contemplating a charger for multiple cells and or discharging cells for storage... check the back of the unit to see if there are any verification stickers or scratch-able s/n sticker.
If you buy one of these fakes you'll be risking more than just a simple malfunction but a serious risk of an explosion or loss of property, i.e. your house or office!!
As you can see in the last pic that the charger felt like reading an erroneous voltage. It was indicating 4.20V but actually putting out 4.24-4.4V and ranging all over the place.
The fake charger was returned without issue to the store in pic1 along with a copy of the warning email from the company to me.
I was refunded without any questions.
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