I recently purchased this Energizer 15 minute charger... It has four individual circuits so that any combination of one to four cells can be charged, and each has it's own peak detection, etc...

Now, this thing apparently charges AA cells at about 8 amps, in order to get 2200mAh cells charged in 15 minutes... They get WARM about 5 minutes into the charge cycle...


But anyway, it got me thinking... What if a person were to tear this charger apart, connect it's circuits up to a gizmo that would hold a four cell pack (simmilar to these individual cell dischargers we use) and use this to charge a race pack...

My thinking... it would go along way toward eliminating or reducing the need for having matched packs... since it's my theory that were cell matching really comes to play is in insuring that packs get charged correctly when using a single charge circuit....

So... have there ever been any RC race chargers that actualy charge each cell seperately? If so, or if not... do you think it would be of any bennifit? (I'm suspecting it could be)...

Considering you can get one of these 15 minute chargers for about $30... it shouldn't be that expensive to build such a beast...

Spintec are coming out with an Individual Cell Charger, namely I.C.C. Not sure how it is built, but it should be a hit ;-)

Interesting thought. I use one for my transmitter batteries and it works well. Just wonder how well it would hold up charging a 3800 cell?

Danny has stated that it's been tested by GP (maybe IB) and it doesn't improve the performance of the pack. I personally find this hard to believe. Might not have a huge effect when packs are new and tightly mathced but after a dozen runs it would have to help.

The only problem I'd see would be in how difficult it might be to connect the pack to the charger... but then they've come up with some pretty nifty rigs for discharging, and there's no reason someone couldn't do the same type of thing with a charger.

What's impressed me most about this little charger I have is the overall size, price, and rate at which it charges. Now given that AA cells max out at about 2500 mAh these days, charging 3900 mAh cells like we have in RC surely would put a bit more of a load on the system(50% more), so yes it's ligitamate to question how well it would work, perticularly over the long haul... Heck I wondered how well it's going to hold up charging AA cells at that rate.

Spintec I.C.C. eh?

http://spintec.nl/ICC.shtml

A holder shouldn't be hard to do as you could adapt just about any side=by-side discharger. What I would worry about more are that our packs are assembled, thus the charger couldn't use a "common" ground as that is what I suspect the Energizer charger uses since each cell is seperate.

Hey Dyno,

Here is a link to what the prototype spintec charger looks like.

http://www.spintec.nl/ICC.shtml