21 st Century 1/6 scale M5 Stuart R/C tank | home
battery charging
I think quite a few guy's bean wondering about this too...
the charging of this 12 volt 7 amp lead-acid battery included with the Stuart....
the question what charger to use to get these battery's charged quicker poped up several times ...
I hope this here will help a little to understand the differences
between the NICD/NIMH battery's vs the lead-acid :
.......a lead-acid battery does not require any special charger ..,
any 12 volt power-supply will do the trick ...
in fact that 2 amp charger included with the Stuart is actually sufficient ..
a lead acid battery get's charged with constant voltage and variable current ..
just the opposite as a NICD / or NIMH....
the lead-acid battery only needs enough voltage ,
in this case here by a 12 volt lead acid 14V to 15 Volt is good
( a fully charged 12 volt lead-acid battery reaches around 14.5 to 15 Volt ) ..
the necessary current get's adjusted from the battery itself ...
a fully discharged lead-accid battery draws first just a few milli-amp's then it increase quite a bid
( to several amps ) and as soon the internal-voltage reaches the "full-mark"
( what happens considerably quick )
the current sinks down to just a few milli-amps again when the battery is getting full ...
in this case with that 12 volt 7 amp Stuart battery you probably get already
after a couple hours 50% from the full charge ....
do not use any of the charger's made for NICD or NIMH battery's ..
you are looking into some serious damage !!
there is no such thing as a "fast-charge-mode" for lead-acid battery's ....
if you want to be time-efficient with the charging ...
connected a volt-meter and amp-meter ...
monitor the Voltage and current ..
as long the battery draws like 2-3or more amps it's empty ,
as soon it drops to 1 amp or less it's getting fuller ...
if it's at the few hundred milli-amps it's almost full ....