Battery Charger Poll
 

What battery charger do you use.
We have been using 6 of the KOP chargers but are having some of them fail and are looking for a best new solution.
I have heard some use the KOP charger
some use the AM one bank charger
some use the AM 3 bank charger and I have see a post
for the Battery Tender 10 bank charger.

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

We have two of the Dual Pro RS3 chargers in a custom made battery cart. We typically bring 6 batteries to competition with us and have a strict rotation we follow to ensure maximum charge.

Edit: Added photos of our charging cart. Students took on this project themselves to avoid lifting a much heavier cart into the back of a school bus. Still needs a bit of decoration but it is functional.

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

We have had a charging station using 12 of the KoP type chargers for several years. We are building new modular 6 battery charging stations for this competition season around AutoMeter BusPro-660 6 bank chargers designed specifically to charge and maintain AGM batteries.

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

dang those are pricey but are our sealed lead acid batteries AGM's?

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

We use 5 of the old KOP chargers from the 2006-2008 era. They still work, I guess.

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

We don't know if yours are because we don't know what batteries your team is using this year. Our team is going to give PowerSonic PS-12180-NB batteries a try this year which are AGM.

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

We use these battery chargers. We have gotten them for as low as $23 in the past.

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

We have an utterly mixed bag of chargers, most of them donated or purchased from auto parts shops. We've learned how to crimp an Anderson battery connector onto a wide variety of wires.

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

Last year we were afflicted with many battery maladies. We got a CBA IV, at the same time we switched from the old KOP chargers to NOCO Genius G3500 battery chargers, found on Amazon. We found that our old KOP chargers were only charging our batteries to between 25-50% of capacity. We don't know how they degenerated to this state, just that they were a large part of our battery-related problems.

The new chargers worked faster, and fully charged our batteries. Combined with testing on the CBA IV, we discovered that these chargers give a diagnostic click to indicate bad cell problems that usually show up after the surface charge is quickly depleted on the field. They also have an AGM mode and a series of status lights that make it very easy to tell what state of charge a battery is in. Additionally, the NOCO chargers have automatic maintenance and repair modes for long term charging or recovery of heavily drained batteries.

Highly recommended! We have two, but I wish we had just one more. We had no issues keeping all of our batteries charged through a regional.

NOCO Genius G3500 UltraSafe Battery Charger

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

We use Noco Genius G7200 battery chargers.

While they are a little on the expensive side I would highly recommend them!

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

After burning up two KOP chargers and noticing that the fans in them fail after a year or two, we got the big Battery Tender.

Well worth the $450 we paid for it. If you have enough batteries to keep it fully loaded, you'll never need more than two amps to charge a battery. Plus it is made by a company named after maintaining batteries...

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

anybody else?

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

We had a custom battery cart with 4 KoP chargers. Last year one of them stopped working on us (after approx 5 years), and we've since upgraded to 2 of the 3-bank chargers from AndyMark. They certainly seem to work well for us!

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

You know those batteries are supposed to be charged standing up??

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

Could someone please provide some credible documentation to substantiate this please? I have seen this posted on Chief Delphi numerous times but I have never seen manufacturer documentation that states this.

It is my understanding that this is true of old liquid cell batteries so that the electrolyte doesn't spill but modern SLA batteries are safe to use/store/charge in any orientation. I may be entirely incorrect in my understanding which is why I am seeking some actual documentation which I am unable to locate even though I have looked. I may just not know what to search for. Thanks.

Edit: For the record our battery charging station is designed so that the batteries are charges laying down. This has seemed to work perfectly fine for us for more years than I can remember right now but that in no way means we are doing it correctly.

Edit #2: I found a wealth of info about a large number of 12V 18Ah batteries of the size we use in FRC at ATBatt.com. They seem to have manufacturer PDFs and technical documentation for just about all of the various brands of batteries we use. As an example I pulled up the Technical Manual for the PowerSonic PS-12180-NB batteries we have purchased to use this year and while there are pages and pages of information on battery charging I did not find one single mention of battery orientation during charging. I would think that if it was important the manufacturer would make mention of it somewhere.

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

The vents for these batteries are on the top. When charging, the battery can generate excess gasses that need to vent. Charging upside down will not allow that to happen.

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

Why? Are the vents some sort of a one way flapper valve or something that do not function properly in an inverted position?

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

If the battery is upside down and gas does need to be vented, there is a real possibility that some of the electrolyte (i.e. acid) will be forced out along with it. In normal operation there shouldn't be any significant liquid outside the glass mat, but overcharging to the point where the battery is overpressurized is not normal operation.

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

If you dont mind me asking... How did you get it at that price :confused:

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

We asked really nice at our local Batteries Plus store and the manager cut us a deal. Also, Amazon has it right now for $487 and it goes on sale from time to time.

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

This is what Enersys told us at work. We use a 7 AHr version of the Genesis in some of our equipment.

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

Schumacher INC-406A 6 Amp Automatic Microprocessor

Chargerhttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31ypRnUMLwL.jpg

These things Rock

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

We got the same charger, and we love it. We never half to worry about having a charged battery at competition. By the time we get through 5 or 6 batteries, the first one is already fully charged again.

By the way, I love your charging station!

Re: Battery Charger Poll
 

Thanks, aside from the charger the most expensive part was the SB50's! We use some old plywood, some scrap lexan, and some extra wire channel.

Charger $450
Harbor Freight hand truck - $38
Leftover plywood - $5
Wire channel - $10
Black paint - $3
SB50's advertised as red but showed up grey - $60
Time spent milling grey sb50's while cursing Amazon - priceless