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Originally Posted by sanddrag
This is possibly my worst screwup yet. At today's meeting, I put a battery on our Schumacher 6A manual battery charger like the one here http://www.polsteins.com/cen62abatcha.html When we all left at 5:00 PM, I forgot to unplug/disconnect it! There's nothing I can do. We cannot get back into the room until 8AM in the morning. What can we expect to find? I really hope it will be okay because I don't believe this model charger has a cutoff.
PS. At first I was really angry that FIRST disallowed manual battery chargers this year. Now I see why.
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Check battery for heat when you get there. Lead acid type batteries normally charge using a constant voltage method. As the battery gets full it's voltage rises and the current drops. Gel cells are based on this technology. The worst thing that can happen if they get too hot from too much current is they will explode, next worst is they vent the "gel" and lose capacity, kind of like tipping a car battery over and letting the acid out, messy, dangerous, and will cut the capacity of the battery.
If the current meter has dropped to about 1 amp or less and the cell is not hot you should be fine.