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Unread 30-09-2014, 08:43
MrBasse MrBasse is offline
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Re: Which Battery to Buy?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz View Post
Andrew,
The linked tester looks interesting but the documentation doesn't really document how each test is performed. I have contacted the manufacturer to see if I can get any additional info. My suspicion is that the load test is performed for a very short period of time that is not controlled by the human tester. That makes the test fairly benign. The PBT-50 looks like a more appropriate tester for our size batteries but both should work.
This stuff is all fairly far outside of my wheelhouse. I know how batteries work and I can take care of them well enough, but my desire to get into the numbers and specifics of testing and data logging is about as strong as my daughter's desire to clean her room.

With that said, our electronics mentor told me that it doesn't technically do a load test. It finds the internal resistance and measures the voltage, then works as a calculator to work through a little ohm's law and gets it's answer. The only downside of the lower models of the Midtronics is that the batteries we use don't generate enough amperage to fully make use of the test. For example, they will most always return a reading of their being a bad or failed cell in the battery simply due to the size of the battery. The PBT-300 allows you to look down to 100 CCA which allows our batteries to be tested to our needs. We will have to test the PBT-50 sometime though and see how it works.

He did mention that the West Mountain Radio tester is something he would be interested in as he has used them before, but $200 is a lot of money for us and we need to make sure we can fund registration before we look at anything like that.
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Andrew Basse
Coach - FRC Team 3572 - Wavelength