Calibrate Your Charger

[Hands0n]

Two years I';ve been in this hobby. Two years, I tell ya     My how time flies.  And last week I learned a new thing.  But a very fundamental thing at that.  That is, how to calibrate my charger(s).  Really!  Who knew? 

Why would you want to do that?  Well, for the longest of times I have observed that I am never really getting a full charge into my LiPo.  Once upon a time I was, but not for simply ages.  My chargers were a pair of iMax B6 (could be clones, I got them before that whole business blew up!).  But yeah, maybe 12.54v if I were lucky, but never a true 12.6v on a 3S (my usual LiPo).

After someone mentioned charger calibration on a FB group I did a bit of digging around and sure enough, my iMax B6 and Turnigy Accucel were off, in the case of one B6 it was way, way off!  They would never correctly measure 12.6v. 

Calibration is simple, and there are YouTube videos for the viewing - the one below works for Turnigy Accucel as well as iMax B6 chargers.

You may have to seek out the specific HowTo for your own charger.  And you will need access to a reliable and trustworthy multimeter.


http://youtu.be/Wqni5WLdoVA

[forest]

nice call and mine is same a video which is handy  only thing is i have two multimeters that down read the same volts i will have tofind out what one is most on point

[PaulJC]

Good post 

iChargers can also be calibrated, i had to do mine when a new one i bought kept reading ';over voltage'; on the same PSU my 1st one had been working fine on for ages...

[Hands0n]

Good post 

iChargers can also be calibrated, i had to do mine when a new one i bought kept reading ';over voltage'; on the same PSU my 1st one had been working fine on for ages...

Cheers.  Do you have a link for how to calibrate the iCharger?  Might as well add it to this thread

For those with the iMax MX100 and their other touchscreen chargers, there doesn';t appear to be a calibration method.  Or as aunty Esther used to say ... Unless you know differently ::)

[arturios]

I have the  LOONG-MAX E6 Charger and can';t find how to calibrate. Anyone else have this or know how?
I';ve been noticing some of my lipos aren';t charging to their full capacity especially my 5000mah ones. I';ve taken to charging them at 2.5A balanced which seems to do the job though.

Good call on this Danny

[bazzerh]

i';d need to calibrate my multimeter first. any videos on that?!

it';d be nice to have a spot on charger but really that last 0.1 volts is going to disappear before you';d taken off i';d have thought. what you might get is a bit more punch for the first 10 seconds or so but i doubt flight times are going to be noticeably different?

in rc cars the pan car boys are using 1 cell packs and they';re well known for overcharging 0.1 v on them just to try and get away at the start, that advantage lasts 1 lap i think and then its into the meat of the pack.

they also have the most lipo fires, idiots

[Paul-H]

Just in case anyone with thinking of giving this a go

The option to calibrate has been removed from the new 80w version of this charger, although I found it to be quite accurate OOTB so not a big issue.

Paul