Recommendations for 6-amp battery chargers

[eugenebrooks]

Originally Posted by Travis Covington

Thanks for the help.

The problem we have with the KOP chargers is that even brand new batteries, when charged for days, will never show a completely green LED that doesn't flash. We purchased 6 new batteries, and 3 new chargers, and let them all properly charge for the reccomended 14+ hours. The LED was green, but it flashed yellow every 10 seconds or so.

To me, this is a bad thing for students who want to quickly grab a battery to put in the robot. They are sitting there looking for the light to stop flashing, when in reality, it never will! Ive seen them more than a few times counting the time between flashes, and then grabbing the one that flashes the least! Granted, you would think there is some logic in doing that, but it never seems to work.

What we want is a charger that gives as an accurate status of the batteries charge level. I know some of the more expensive 3 stage chargers have this ability? I think it would be much prefered.

I also am going to try and convince to team to purchase one of those Computerized battery analyzers. That would help us seperate good and bad batteries much more easily.

Thanks again!

Depending upon your wallet, try the interacter charger available at
http://www.batteryweb.com/interacter.cfm
it is also available as a 5 bank unit. This is the unit we use.
It is a true three stage charger, with a green light that does not
lie and a yellow light that indicates greater than 80% charge status.
The five bank unit will keep an entire alliance topped
off for a trip through the finals.