iMAX B6 charger - am I the only one who's confused by the instructions?

[Caveira]

I've taken the plunge and switched to a lipo setup, including getting an iMAX B6 charger/balancer. I'm far from being thick, but I'm beginning to think you need a PhD in electronics to work the bloody thing.

It's taken me about an hour to work out how to set up a discharge/charge cycle for my one remaining nimh battery. I'm dreading to think how long it will take to work out how to charge the lipos with it when they arrive.

Am I the only person who has found this, or have any of you had the same problem? Also, can anyone point me in the direction of some easy to understand instructions for it?

[newbieC]

Re: iMAX B6 charger - am I the only one who's confused by the instructions?

just do what i do, leave it for an hour eat dinner or whatever but dont think about it and then comeback FRESH!
Connor

[jagillham]

Re: iMAX B6 charger - am I the only one who's confused by the instructions?

Oh the lipo's are easy with this one, just plug in and it auto does it. Working out the NiHm... not really figured that myself yet. Mainly because cuts off after 2 hrs! I assume there is a way to override that. :D

[caffin999]

Re: iMAX B6 charger - am I the only one who's confused by the instructions?

I bought my imax B6 about 5 weeks ago and still haven't used it lol. You have reminded me to sit down and actually try to use the thing lol

[jfox61]

Re: iMAX B6 charger - am I the only one who's confused by the instructions?

Rockin what exactly do you need to know. The cut off is programmeable I have used pretty much all of its functions so canhelp you out. I found the booklet of instructions actually to be one of the best lol. There are a couple of pigeon english paragraphs but nothing too bad. which pages are confusing you? As Jag says mate plug in the lipo it can only go in one place so you can't screw up. plug in the balancer again foolproof select li po then press charge, thats it.

[Caveira]

Re: iMAX B6 charger - am I the only one who's confused by the instructions?

It's not lipo charging that's confusing me at the moment, as they haven't arrived yet.

I'm trying to discharge/charge an 8.4v 3300 mah nimh ready for Sunday. I know that when charging the battery is taking a greater voltage than it stores, but these chargers are supposed to detect the battery type and it's showing the battery as having 9.5v stored and it's still trying to charge, so at that point I bottled it and pulled the plug!

BTW Jag, go into user set programme and one of the options is to change the safety cut out time from 120 mins. I didn't work that out from the instructions, though, I just scrolled through the menu seeing what things do.

[screwdriver]

Re: iMAX B6 charger - am I the only one who's confused by the instructions?

a fully charged 8.4v nimh battery is about 9.6v approx when measured with a multimeter, ive just measured mine so charger was probably correct at 9.5.
plus you shouldnt discharge nimh batteries only ni-cad due to memory effect

[jfox61]

Re: iMAX B6 charger - am I the only one who's confused by the instructions?

Ni Mh sdo suffer from memory effect just less so. You don't need to dicharge Charge as often as NiCads but it pays to do it occasionally. Not going to get into a discussion on here though as there's a couple of big Threads on batteries pro and cons. Back on Subject.

Rocking how is your battery charge cycle set Man or AUT. If it is set to Auto then check what your upper charge limit is. If manual set it your self. Page 12 of the Manual has the flow chart for all the functions of the charger. Apart from that page and page 8 you can pretty much leave the rest of the manual alone All it does is try to explan the functions, but unless you can read fluent pigeon it will be hard work.

Now what is your largest cap and smallest cap battery? If you are setting the charger to Auto then your battery can charge at anything up to 2C. If you feel comfortable charging you batteries at that rate then set the Auto to the C rating of your smallest battery. If you have a few different sizes, then I recommend setting each battery by manual and sticking it in the memory function, put a little sticker on each battery to show where it is in the program.

You can store 5 different battery sizes. Hope that helps but if not give me a pm and I will talk you through it. I will not be online till about midnight though as I am off to work