This procedure was only tested using a 4 cell, 2300 mAH NiMH battery pack but I don't see why at this point why packs with more or less cells will not work. Different cell capacities may have different charge voltage curves that my procedure may not be able to handle. Charging at a .1C rate should not damage anything so its worth trying. The Triton charge step size is 100mA so for battery capacities below 1000mA the charger will not be able to do a .1C rate.
Through some of the input I received, a little web research, and some experimentation I have determined how to use the Triton charger to work as a low constant current charger to condition new NiCad or NiMh batteries. The problem with the Triton charger is that peak detection cannot be turned off (a gross oversight on the design team IMHO). However if you look at the charge curves for NiMh (sorry, I only looked into NiMH but I believe the same general procedure will work for NiCad) under low charge currents such as the .1C rate, which is the desired rate for conditioning new batteries, the peak in applied voltage to maintain the constant current is almost non-existent at this rate. See figure 17 in the document at:
http://www.moltech.com/techdata/appmanuals/NiMH_Application_Manual.asp
The lack of a clearly defined peak at the .1C rate and that you can set the Triton peak detection voltage allows you to operate the charger as a slow charger, i.e one that doesn't peak detect.
Here is a step by step procedure for a NiMH battery pack which was a 4 cell receiver pack using 2300 mAH batteries:
1) Calculate the charge current to use for conditioning a battery. Use a .1C rate. For the example pack: 2300 X .1 = 230mA, round to the nearest 100ma or 200ma for this example (the charge current minimum step increment for the Triton is 100mA steps)
2) Calculate the total amount of charge capacity that will go to the battery. This is necessary to defeat another parameter called the NiMH Max Charge Input (p. 14 in the manual) which will terminate the charge if set incorrectly. In step (1) we calculated a charge current of 200mA. The maximum time we can get the Triton charger to run is 990 minutes = 16.5 hours (the Safety Timer parameter, see step 5 and p. 13 of the manual). During charging the Triton will continually calculate the charge put into the battery by taking the charge value and integrating over time. Since its a constant current charger the math is easy, charge current X charge time. For our example, 200mA X 16.5 hours = 3300mAH. So we will need to set the NiMH Max Charge Input to a value higher than this number or else the charger will terminate prematurely.
3) Set battery type to NiMH
4) To further ensure peak detection is not reached set the sensitivity to the highest value, 15mV per cell, in the setup menu
5) Set the safety timer to the maximum value in the setup menu to 990 minutes = 16.5 hours. This will act as the timer for the charge operation since we have defeated the peak detection system
4) Set the NiMH Max Charge Input to a value higher than the value calculated in step 2. For my example I set the value to 3500mAH
5) OK - here is where if you screw up, you can ruin your battery, set your house on fire, kill the dog, get divorced, go insane, become an alcoholic, etc
Set the charge current to a .1C rate calculated in step 1 or 200mA for this example. If you set this value to the wrong number like a high current the Triton will merrily cook your batteries (though you might get a peak detection) for hours with all the nice safety features defeated.
6) Thats it - hold down the button for 2 seconds and start conditioning the batteries. The charger should stop in 16.5 hours.
There is probably some debate if 16.5 hours is sufficient to condition the batteries. My Triton came with table that gives 'Break-In" times for various sizes of NiCad and NiMH and none of the times were that long. In Geroge Joy's recent post for his new "Sirius Pro Former" he mentions 24 hours for large packs. I guess for longer times you could run the Triton charger again and set the Safety Timer parameter to a value to get the charge time you want.
George says on his website for the Sirius Pro Former "After 24 hours, your new pack will be completely formed and ready for 3 to 5 fast charge cycles. It will then be capable of achieving all the performance the manufacturer designed in, but didn't take the time to build in.". So after performing the above set the Triton up for discharge-charge cycle and you have completed the process.
Regards,
Russ Light [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
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