Charging Lions - does this make sense ???

[JimH]

I just received two lion batteries with chargers.

Battery #1 has a selectable output of 16v or 19v. The charger included has an output of 12.6v. The user manual is consistent.

Battery #2 has a selectable output of 9v or 12v. The charger included has an output of 16.8v. The user manual is consistent.

Is it reasonable to use a 12.6v output charger to charge a lion battery that outputs 16-19v. Also is it reasonable that a battery that outputs 9-12v has a charger that outputs 16.8 volts.

I'd like to charge these babies and put them into service, but I'm concerned about the disparity between battery voltage and charger voltage.

Any help to make sense of this would be much appreciated.

 

[MrAl]

Hi there,

Normally, you would charge a 3.7v cell with a 4.2v
charger, so 7.4v would get charged with an 8.4v charger.
What you're telling us here doesnt make that much sense
at least on the surface of it. The higher voltage
battery gets the lower voltage charger (?) -- doesnt
make too much sense.

What you could do is try to measure the voltage at the
connector (or whatever) where the charger plugs into the
battery pack. This might tell you more about the
true voltage of the battery pack.

You can also try to measure the output of the charger.
If it puts out without a cell connected, you can
then get an idea what the true output is for the
charger.

Hope this helps...

Where did you get these batteries and chargers?

Take care,
Al

 

[JimH]

[ QUOTE ]
MrAl said:
Where did you get these batteries and chargers?


[/ QUOTE ]

Al, Thanks for the suggestions. I got the batteries here and here.

 

[andrewwynn]

I'd first look and see if the input jack matches what the adapter says.. if it matches or as it sounds like.. the manual matches, you should have nothing to worry about.. they just solve the problem electronically.. with a boost ckt or a buck ckt or something... it could be that the cells are wired inside so they charge in pairs in parallel or something.. no way to tell.. there should not be a problem using the adapters that came with but i'd not mix them up.

-awr

 

[Krit]

I use mobile telephone charger adapt to charge individual li-ion cell. It is no problem.

 

[PeLu]

As mentioned above, battery #1 may be a 3S4P package with a boost converter.
Battery 2 may be a 4S2P package with a buck converter.
Both of them containing 18650 cells or very similar sized ones.
Simple, isn't it?

Only use the appropriate charger, of course