Help with Duratrax ICE charger

[Greywolf74]

So I've been into RCs for a little over a year now but its only been nitro up until now. Now I'm working on my first electric kit. One of the first things I've bought is the Duratrax ICE charger because several people recommended it to me. Only problem is I've read the manual and I don't understand half of what its talking about. I don't have LiPo yet but I started messing around with the charger to charger my NMiH RX packs.

I've reset it to factory settings and when I try to charge my brand new Losi 6V RX battery for my XXL. I know how to get it to run a change or a discharge and charge cycle but the vast majority of the settings there I don't understand what they do or what they are for? Are there any of them that I need to be particularly careful with changing? Are there any settings I should even bother to change from factory settings? One of the reasons I ask is because when I charge the aforementioned battery it only charges it to about 920-975 mah when the battery is supposed to be an 1100 mah. Am I doing something wrong or is it not uncommon to find that companies often exaggerate the capacity of their batteries?

Any better insight into the settings of the ICE charger would be much appreciated. Or if anyone know of a link that explains the various options in more detail that would be awesome too. I know this is kind of a PITA question you'll have to pardon my newbness.

 

[Rolex]

It's possible you have the safety time out set to turn off before the battery is fully charged. It might also be the mAH setting is too low and that's when it turns off.
I recently got a similar charger and it was confusing at first. Just go through the menu step by step.
You'll need to have the battery plugged into the charger for it to recognize some of the menu items, otherwise it won't even display them.

 

[Greywolf74]

I have the mah value set right...as for a saftey time out I dont remember seeing an option for that but Ill take a closer look after a bit.

 

[Greywolf74]

whats the max charge i can put on a 5 cell nmih rx pack? factorty seting is.8amps.

 

[Rolex]

Charge NiMH at face value.
If it's 1100 mAH, charge it at 1.1 amps. 4800, 4.8 amps, etc.

 

[Greywolf74]

well I just did that and for some reason the charger is only charging a couple hundred mah less than their rating....my 1400 ony charged to 1234mah. my 1100mah charges to 950ish. they are both Losi batteries....they exaggerating their mah capacity or do i have some not set right?

 

[Candyman]

No. That's the number of mAh the charger had to put in to get the pack to full volume. That just means there was still a little charge in the pack before you charged it.

If you're doing just NiCd or NiMH you really only need to worry about the settings on the main screen. Get the battery type right. The number of cells. And the charge current. For NiCd you use 1C. So if you have 1000 mAh NiCd's you charge at 1 amp. For NiMH you can use 1.5C safely. So a 1000 mAh pack can be charged at 1.5 amps easily. Then just hold down the button to get to the charge screen and start a regular charge.

 

[Greywolf74]

ahhhhhhh gotchya!