We are using the Blue robotics 18Ah Lithium ion battery in our product. I want to know that if there is any way to charge the battery with a simple plug in of the dc power, i.e the customer doesn’t need to go through all the options in the charger provided by blue robotics and it simply starts charging in the Lithium ion mode. And if this is not possible with the charger provided by you then how can we achieve this?
1 Like
You could definitely buy a dumb charger that you just plug in, or maybe push one button once kind of thing. Might be harder to find one like that, that will charge at ten amps, assuming you charge at the max rate.
Charger can be found but the issue is do all the individual cell inside the battery be charged equally, as this is the case with the standard charger of Blue robotics which charges all the cells equally.
You’re talking about balance charging? I was into electric r/c airplanes back when lithium polymers were first making their way into the e-r/c scene and balance chargers for lipo weren’t even a thing. Sure maybe the capacity decreases a bit over time, but there’s nothing really “wrong” with not balance charging, imo. It’s just not getting max life/performance out of your battery and if that’s what your situation calls for then that’s what it calls for. Especially if you’re using it for work, not really a big deal if a $250 battery is only good for a year.
It is very important to balance charge a lithium-ion or lithium-polymer battery! If you do not balance charge at least every couple cycles, the cells will become mismatched in voltage, leading to some being much higher or lower than others. At best, this will result in some cells over discharging when the complete battery is at its end voltage, damaging them and quickly reducing battery performance and capacity, leading to a very early end of life.
However, at worst it will also lead to some cells going over the max voltage and overcharging when charging. This can be very dangerous and potentially lead to an explosion or fire!
There is no reason not to balance charge, for almost a decade now balance chargers have been ubiquitous and I think you would now be hard pressed to find a proper lithium charger that does not have balancing capability.
Nitesh, once our charger has been set once, the settings should not need to adjusted if the customer does not want to. The charger will boot in the same mode and settings it was previously set to, all they should need to do it plug in the battery and hold “start”.
A simple plug-and-play solution like you are asking for does exist, but they are limited in power. Something like this should work, but it will only charge at less that 3A. It will take about 6-8 h to fully charge one of our 18 Ah battery packs.
-Adam
2 Likes
Could you please provide the recommended settings of the charger and a picture of the correct use of ports when charging the battery?
- Ragnvald
Hi @Algetun,
You can find the recommended settings to charge our battery with our charger under the “Learn” section of the store page:
- Plug battery into charger, as well as balance plug if applicable
- Select battery type/chemistry (Lithium Battery)
- Select charge cycle type (Lipo Balance Charge)
- Select charge current (10A recommended)
- Press and hold “Start” to begin charge cycle
-Adam