La Crosse BC-900 Charger Warning

SilverFox

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1/9/2006

Many of you are familiar with the La Crosse BC-900 charger. It has a lot of excellent features and has been highly recommended by myself, and others.

In the last month, there have been several reports of meltdowns with this charger. At first I thought it had to do with charging high capacity cells at a low charge rate. Several have reported their chargers and cells melting together when charging Energizer 2500 mAh cells at 200 mA. However, I just recently became aware of another melt down involving Sanyo 2500 mAh cells in the test mode charging at 1000 mA and discharging at 500 mA.

I have been in touch with La Crosse and have discovered that the high temperature shut down on the BC-900 is set for 160 F. It seems that once the outside case of the cell gets to 160 F, there is some momentum left and the cells continue to heat up resulting in a melted case.

The other problem is that the BC-900 does not completely stop the charge in the event of high temperatures. It shuts the charge down until the cell cools off, then resumes charging again.

I have instructed people to keep a watchful eye on their battery charging, and to keep combustibles away. As a result, there have been no reports of loss of property (other than chargers and cells).

I have had no problems with my charger, but in light of the recent reports, I feel a word of caution is advised.

If you have any problems, you can contact La Crosse at 888-211-1923.

Tom
 

Grubbster

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Yikes! My brother-in-law bought my 71 year old mother-in-law one of these chargers for Christmas. She is the type to put a battery in there and forget about it. Guess I need to make a phone call.
 

dfred

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BatteryCharger said:
Wow, that sounds like something worthy of a recall.


To cynically paraphrase Fight Club: "A new battery charger built by the company starts charging at 200ma. The overtemperature behavior of the design is flawed. The charger melts and burns with everyone trapped inside the house. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of chargers in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." :eek:

Not all companies think like this, but there's an element of truth there. A counter example would be Nikon's recent recall of a whole bunch of li-ion batteries even though there'd been only 4 confirmed incidents with no injuries. Or, then again, maybe X was greater...

I have seen a few comments about melted LaCrosse chargers and batteries, but have there been cases of the burning/melting of surrounding materials or the production of smoke/fumes?
 
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cacer

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Dec 28, 2005
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16
hi,

i got the same charger and the first thing i have done was opening !
i read about that the ptc`s sometimes have no contact to the cells.
in my case the ptc under the first and second cell had only contact to the plastic-case (and not to the metal) . i fixed that.
could that be a part of the "melting problem" ? in that case the charger recognize only a lower temp and can`t stop heating up.

oh,and i got firmware 31 .

greetz
cacer
 

senna94

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Houston, Texas
SilverFox said:
1/9/2006

Many of you are familiar with the La Crosse BC-900 charger. It has a lot of excellent features and has been highly recommended by myself, and others.

In the last month, there have been several reports of meltdowns with this charger. At first I thought it had to do with charging high capacity cells at a low charge rate. Several have reported their chargers and cells melting together when charging Energizer 2500 mAh cells at 200 mA. However, I just recently became aware of another melt down involving Sanyo 2500 mAh cells in the test mode charging at 1000 mA and discharging at 500 mA.

I have been in touch with La Crosse and have discovered that the high temperature shut down on the BC-900 is set for 160 F. It seems that once the outside case of the cell gets to 160 F, there is some momentum left and the cells continue to heat up resulting in a melted case.

The other problem is that the BC-900 does not completely stop the charge in the event of high temperatures. It shuts the charge down until the cell cools off, then resumes charging again.

I have instructed people to keep a watchful eye on their battery charging, and to keep combustibles away. As a result, there have been no reports of loss of property (other than chargers and cells).

I have had no problems with my charger, but in light of the recent reports, I feel a word of caution is advised.

If you have any problems, you can contact La Crosse at 888-211-1923.

Tom




I just ordered the BC-900 today and had been debating whether to get it or the 8 cell Maha. I guess I made the wrong choice. Just out of curiousity, where have you read these reports? Have any CPF users actually had one melt down? I guess I am trying to asess just how big of a problem it is. Was Lacrosse any help in reasuring you or offering to give you a refund?

Thanks,
Paul


:huh:
 

Beacon of Light

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And I thought my only problems with this charger was relegated to 2 faulty power supplys. I will be aware. Since I've had 3 units now, I was accustomed to leaving the charger fill with batteries while I was off at work. Now I will have to rethink that strategy.

Just when I thought I finally had what appears to be the perfect charger, this news....
 

mccavazos

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dfred said:
I have seen a few comments about melted LaCrosse chargers and batteries, but have there been cases of the burning/melting of surrounding materials or the production of smoke/fumes?

When my BC-900 went down, It was the smell that first alerted me. It was really dark in the house, so I have no idea if there was smoke or not...
 

mccavazos

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senna94 said:
I just ordered the BC-900 today and had been debating whether to get it or the 8 cell Maha. I guess I made the wrong choice. Just out of curiousity, where have you read these reports? Have any CPF users actually had one melt down? I guess I am trying to asess just how big of a problem it is. Was Lacrosse any help in reasuring you or offering to give you a refund?

Thanks,
Paul


:huh:

Mine completely melted down, and I made a post about it here on CPF. LaCrosse is replacing my charger and batteries, and gave me a UPS return slip so that I could mail the melted one back at no expense to me. I talked to a guy named Brian, He was very nice and very helpful.
 

senna94

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Beacon of Light said:
And I thought my only problems with this charger was relegated to 2 faulty power supplys. I will be aware. Since I've had 3 units now, I was accustomed to leaving the charger fill with batteries while I was off at work. Now I will have to rethink that strategy.

Just when I thought I finally had what appears to be the perfect charger, this news....

How long have you had yours and what version do you currently have? Did Lacrosse replace it or did you go through your distributor? I am dissapointed because I asked Thomas Distributing if they had had any problems with the BC-900 and they told me no!!!!!!


:xyxgun:
 
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underdust

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I bought one of these about two weeks ago, but I have yet to even open the box. These "meltdown" stories have me a little worried, so now I'm kind of waiting to see how everything plays out before I begin putting it into regular use.
 

nuggett

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I have had mine for 3 weeks now, no problems so far...version 33
 

tacoal

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SilverFox:
1. Is this the first charge of those sanyo 2500ma battery? Sanyo is an OEM of Energizer.
2. Is the third party power supply used (the 3.3 Volt)?

I think something is wrong with the CPU when melting down happens or the MOSFET is malfunction. The MOSFET is NTGS3443T1 with max current 3 A, almost no margin at all

My BC-900 works fine for over 6 mos. I'm plan to change the MOSFETs with one having some margin.
 
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SilverFox

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Hello Tacoal,

Welcome to CPF.

The Sanyo batteries, as I understand it, had several cycles on them and were being tested to match capacity in a multi cell application. It was not the first charge on them.

The BC-900 was used with the stock power supply.

As I mentioned before, I have had no problems at all with mine, which is a version 32 unit. I use mine all the time with all kinds of differing capacity cells. I am very pleased with the performance of my unit.

However, there have been enough reports of things getting hot, that it prompted me to get in touch with La Crosse and ask them some questions. When I found out the cut off temperature was set to 160 F, I decided that I needed to pass on a warning. Basically that high a cut off means that if the charger misses the end of charge signal, and you don't notice that the cells are getting hot, you will most likely end up with a meltdown, and ruin the cells you are charging at the time.

I still like the BC-900, but I keep a pretty close watch on it while I am charging. I have always charged on a fireproof surface, so I am not worried about the actual heat, but I would hate to ruin a set of cells that I have spent an extended amount of time conditioning and cycling.

I am not sure if we can "adjust" the high temperature value, but it sure would be nice to have it kick in at around 120 - 130 F range.

Tom
 

snoofer

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Heres my meltdown story:

My La Crosse BC-900 just took a nose dive and "fried" four batts and the center part of the console, and display.

Funny thing about this situation is, I had set the charger to charge at 200 mA in order to wake up to fresh charged batts for Christmas morning.

My wife came into the room and stated that something smells burning...I didnt think anything of it, then about five mins later-I hear what sounds like sizzling hot popping sounds.

I jumped up and ran to the bathroom disconnected the plug, ran and got some pliers and pulled out the batts and placed them on an old rag and started squirting water on them--(still sizzling).

Bottom Line:

I'm out a charger, 4 batts, and a wife that keeps telling me how I could have burned down the house! (she's right).

The batts were the "Digital" brand from Walmart 2000 mAh

And heres a pic:



EDIT: This was the 2nd time charging these batteries.
 

Mr_Light

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Silver Spring, MD
I have a had a BC-900 for about a month without problems so far... I am wondering if their are any other chargers which display similar quantitative voltage/capacity info? If so what would the least expensive alternative be?
 

SilverFox

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Bellingham WA
Hello Snoofer,

If you haven't already, would you please call La Crosse at 888-211-1923 and report what happend.

They are telling me that they are not aware of this happening, and I just want them to know that it is a real issue.

Thanks.

Tom
 
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