Is charging the 18650 a major event in your life?

Charging batteries is the highlight of my evening. The Nitecore D4 Digicharger stays on the floor in the biscuit tin and the weekly discharged 18650s are nearby ready to be locked and loaded and boy do I pay due care. I mean these guys will blow your ears off if they get pissed, right? I tried explaining to my wife how high energy cells need treating but she ended up yawning. In the end I went with the line from Spiderman The Movie "With great power comes great responsibility" and the following educational video:





How do you charge yours?

Get a life!

Just kidding!

I'll admit iy gives me a bit of a "rush" to charge a bunch of 18650s at the same time - I'm very aware of the awesome energies involved, and the large aluminum baking tray I put the chargers on when charging seems awefully thin sometimes!

Once I waded thru all the overinflated hype online and youtube videos of people hooking these up to car batteries, I realized it's just another thing in life...like plugging in your toaster or driving a car. You can easily get killed walking your dog.

No big deal. Just buy good cells and chargers. If the deal is too good to be true, it's probably a fake.

I left some cells charging for about 2 days this week; totally forgot in the basement! That $.25 part did it's job to stop charging. Same as the $.25 part somewhere in a plane from keeping it from crashing. Same as the $.25 part that works to inflate your airbag at 60mph.

My only free plug outlet is under my bed. So it get's charged on my bed, on top of my spare pillow.

freman said:

My only free plug outlet is under my bed. So it get's charged on my bed, on top of my spare pillow.

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Eeek! This would scare me. Make sure your charger can breath. A lot of charger's breath from the bottom,
so you could be blocking the vents by using a pillow.

Luckily the new NiteCore chargers have their vents up top!
Just something that came to mind! I'm sure you know what your doing tho.

:laughing:

Seriously????

Charging my cells is like opening a can of soup..............yes that exciting for me

I treat it with care, about the same care as plugging my phone into its charger.

plug in, turn on, walk away...

Guys as I type, I'm charging three brand new 18650 batteries in my Nightcore D4. Charging time has been 3 hours 45 minutes at the moment. They are 4.04 volts right now. I did leave the house for about two hours. Are you guys telling me I could cause a Black Hole if things go bad and I'm not available to immediately stop charging? Don't do this to me, please.

I am an old farted geek. I used to me a young motorcycle geek forty years ago. Today, I get excited about firing up my new Techno-Toys as I did back then firing up my Harley. Sick? Maybe. A Nerd-Geek? Definitely.

Hi mr oath,tbh 99.9% of the time you will be fine,however that 0.01% there is always a slight potential risk.

Simply put,its good practice to charge cells whilst your in the vicinity,ideally not left whilst out or over night when one is asleep. Most chargers will be done within 4hrs,even quite deep cycles. So rather than take any potential risk,eliminate them,and stay in the house.

Example-i charge at least 4 cells a day,i dont leave over night or nip out,highly unlikely with a good brand charger and cell,but still i am always around "just in case".

Most chargers do terminate,the nitecore d4 does,as with any electrical item,they should never be relied on fully,so call it better to be safe than sorry.

Just way i am ,my opinion............too add,never had an issue in many years of charging and uses.

Regards ven

Keeper Oath said:

...Are you guys telling me I could cause a Black Hole if things go bad and I'm not available to immediately stop charging? Don't do this to me, please....

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Black hole? No... Char-broiled house? It's possible. I always babysit my chargers when they're running.

charging singles no big deal. but when juicing this one up i don't F around...

pic overclocker .............little OTT for a head torch though !

freman said:

My only free plug outlet is under my bed. So it get's charged on my bed, on top of my spare pillow.

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:huh2::sleepy:

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It is absolutely routine...but I do charge only when I am home. No problem charging overnight, and I don't watch it every minute, but the idea is to be able to respond if there ever was an issue. Just like any other situation that could potentially cause a fire...seems like common sense, even if the odds are quite low. I have a fire extinguisher (amazes me how many people don't) and I charge on a slate surface, which helps keeps the chargers cool.

Overclocker said:

charging singles no big deal. but when juicing this one up i don't F around...

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When I'm charging my single 18650s, I babysit them, but that is on the next level!

A complete non-event, and I do a lot of charging.

Houses have smoke alarms (or should do), and the most I do is make sure the charger is not on or very near to soft furnishings.

Nope, not at all.

hiuintahs said:

When I see how cheap some of these off the shelf chargers are, I have to wonder exactly how it is designed.

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As a counterpoint: a Li-ion charger is basically a regulated voltage source with a current limit. A good/fancy charger may add all sorts of things to that like different charge currents, reverse polarity detection, bringing an over-discharged cell up sloooowly, voltage display, etc, etc. But if you keep things simple, a Li-ion charger is one of the simplest pieces of electronics to make. And thus in practice, even a cheaply produced one can do a decent job.

For comparison a decent NiMH charger must at least watch how a cell's voltage develops over time. And perhaps temperatures too (not that watching temps would be a bad thing for a Li-ion charger, but just not as needed as with a NiMH charger). That means some kind of 'intelligence' (read: microcontroller) must be in there. Now those are also cheap in numbers, but still more expensive (and more complex to design with) than a simple voltage regulator. Plastic housing & some metal springs / clamps cost 'nothing'.

For peace of mind, I ended up designing my own lithium ion chargers......a 12v and a USB powered. But I still only will charge when at home and nearby.

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Power to you! :thumbsup: Personally I have better things to do with my life than design YABC (Yet Another Battery Charger).

I use 2 hobby chargers that are powered by an old computer PSU.
Both my hobby chargers have a magnetic temperature sensor and I have set the cut-off temperature on my chargers to within 5 degrees of what I've previously seen the cells get to during a normal charge.
I like the fact that a cell starting to get hot will trigger the charger to stop charging it, this seems like a really sensible precaution to me.
I also use two 1 foot x 1 foot ceramic floor tiles to sit my PSU, chargers and batteries on - seems safer than sitting them on my pillow!!!!!

With my setup I'm pretty happy that a nasty event is unlikely and I'll happily leave the chargers to do their job.