Battery Charger

[mskobier]

All,
First of all, I definately prefer old tech when it comes to battery chargers. You can not make a big enough transformer based battery charger to satisfy me. However, I finally took the dive and purchased one of the new switch mode battery chargers. I must say, I am suitably impressed!

I purchased this charger in a Black and Decker factory outlet store on the Oregon coast the first weekend in June. The store was having a sale where some items were discounted as much as 50%. The one I purchased was a factory refurbished unit and I gave about $35.00 for it with 40% store sale discount.

The charger is the fully automatic 3 stage 40 amp continuous charger with 110 amp engine start. It appears to be a fairly well built charger. I have only used it a few times to fully charger a couple of batteries, but it does its job very well. It has a number of features I will probably never use, such as alternator test mode.

One of the nicest features of the charger is its weight. It weighs a little under 10 lbs. A transformer based charger of this capacity would easily weigh 75lbs or more!

It also has a battery recondition mode. A battery if left in a fully discharged condition (someone left a light on in the trailer a number of weeks ago, etc) will undergo a chemical reaction called sulfation. You can usually tell a sulfated battery by the smell when you are trying to charge it. Anyway, this charger has a mode where it claims it can restore a sulfated battery to useable condion. I understand how this is done manually, but this charger has a mode where it can do it automatically. I haven't tried it yet (hopefully I never need it). But its nice to know it has that capability.

Anyway, I think this is a good battery charger for the price, with lots of features. It also has a 5 year warranty. Haven't seen a warranty for anything electric/electronic with this long of warranty in a very long time.

Here's a picture of the charger. sorry for the poor quality.

Mitch

[dh]

Can't beat the outlet stores. I picked up a propane lantern at the Coleman outlet store once for $8, new in box. I couldn't figure out why it was in the outlet store, let alone that cheap, until I got it next to the camp stove. That Colman green was just a shade off.

[eamarquardt]

I often hear folks complain about "inflation". Yeah, it hurts at times but the stuff and technology (tools in particular) that we are able to buy that were beyond the reach or even the imaginations of our parents' generation amaze me. Factor in garage saleing, outlet stores, new manufacturing techniques and things aren't all that bad. I have lots of tools my father couldn't even dream of purchasing!!!

Your new charger is a good example of something that wasn't available for the consumer until fairly recently (depending upon your definition of recent).

Times may be tough but they aint all that bad!

One thing I've discovered with the some of the "new electronic" chargers is that they won't resurect a battery from "the dead". To prevent damage to the charger they must "see" around 5 volts or so to start charging. You can get past this by starting out with an old time charger or jumping it with another battery to get it "kick started" to the point that one of the new chargers can take over. Small price to pay for all the new features in the new ones though.

Cheers,

Gus

[mskobier]

All,
its been a few months since i purchased the battery charger. Since that time, I have used the charger several times. So here is the report.

I am still very impressed overall but somewhat disappointed with a certain aspect of the charger.

The charger works very well. I have used it mainly to top off the battery every few weeks, or when I am working in the trailer.

A couple of weeks ago, after returning from the Labor day camping trip, I turned the fantastic fan on high while I was unloading the trailer. I then closed up the trailer and moved it back to its normal parking location, disconnected the truck and wnet into the house. The next day around lunch time, I remembered that I had turned on the fan around 1100am the previous day. I went out to the trailer and sure enough, the fan was still running. It was noticeably slower, but it was still pulling a fair amount of air. That is almost a complete 24 hrs run time on the battery at 3 amps!. I hooked the battery charger up to the battery and started the charge cycle. It promptly started putting 40 amps into the battery. After about 2 hrs, it started to taper off. In approx 3 hrs, the battery charger shut itself off and the battery was fully charged!. I know this is rough service on the battery, but the battery charger brought it back to full charge in a reasonable period of time.

Now the disappointing part. I am an amateur radio operator. When we go camping, I always take a portable antenna to keep a few scheduled contacts and to check into the local Emergency traffic nets. Anyway, I run off a small gell cell battery, that only gives me about 10 hrs operation before the battery is dead. Since it was an extended camping trip, I brought a small generator and the battery charger to recharge the radio battery and the CT battery. While charging the CT battery, I turned the HF radio on, and the noise on the radio terrible! It appears the battery charger is very noisy in the RF spectrum. Easily S9+ noise across most of the lower HF spectrum. So I had to plan my radio operation in the periods when the generator was not plugged in. A slight inconvience, but I had hoped it would not be as noisy as it is. I also verifed the noise after I returned hope.

Well, other than the noise, which would not be an issue for most people, I give the battery charger a solid B+.


Take care
Mitch

[Shadow Catcher]

Are there line filters that you could use or something like a UPS that could be used. This is an area of almost total ignorance for me, Is the interference broadcast or transmitted through the electrical connections?

[absolutsnwbrdr]

This is probably too simple, but what about using a ground loop isolator? That works for well car audio.

[mskobier]

Shadow Catcher,
The interference is definately broadcast via radio waves. Most all electronic devices generate some radio frequencies (RF). Most do not cause any interference. Since I am a radio operator and have radio equipment that operates on several segments of the RF spectrum from the AM broadcast band (500khz) to 500mhz, I am much more aware of these issues than most. There is really no way to filter out or eliminate this interference in this battery charger. Amateur radio operators have been using switch mode power supplies for many years. These power supplies are designed for use with radio equipment, and even some of those still generate some RF that can be an issue with radio equipment. For the majority of people, this battery charger will work great. It works well for me, I just have to use it when I am not wanting to use the radio.

Another device that has been a growing problem in the radio community is the wireless router/modem that your computer communicates with the internet through. I can drive through a neighborhood and often tell which homes have wireless routers and which do not. Some are far noisier than others. Some I can "hear" a couple of blocks away!The Linksys that I use doesn't cause harmfull interference. It is located less than 4 ft from my radio gear, and only is noticeable on a couple of frequencies in the 146 mhz band.

absolutsnwbrdr,
The ground loop isolator would have no effect on this issue since the interference is broadcast via radio waves and not through the wires.

Mitch

[Shadow Catcher]

Unfortunately it sounds like this may be a case of you get what you pay for. I am sure there are converters meeting your needs with out the interference.

[Shadow Catcher]

Unfortunately it sounds like this may be a case of you get what you pay for. I am sure there are converters meeting your needs with out the interference.

[absolutsnwbrdr]

The ground loop isolator would have no effect on this issue since the interference is broadcast via radio waves and not through the wires.

I knew that was too easy.

Its been a few years since my electronics communication courses, and I really only remember the basics. I always did prefer the fiber optics over the analog systems. Damn those Smith charts.

[vreihen]

Are you sure that it wasn't the generator causing the interference?????

[mskobier]

vreihen,
Yes, I am sure. The charger causes the same interference wether it is plugged into my home AC as it does plugged into the generator.

All,
Please do not misunderstand. I am not downing the charger. It does exactly what it is supposed to do. It does an excellent job of charging the battery. the RF noise issue is only because I am involved in radio things. If I were not, I would not even know or for that matter care that it generated some RF. As I stated in an earlier post, ALL electronic devices generate some RF noise. Some just are better than others.

Mitch

[Engineer Guy]

From the get-go, I just assumed the noise was due to a Switched Mode Power Supply. Not so much because of clairvoyant insight, but because most all Power Supplies today are 'Switchers' vs. the Linear Mode Power Supplies we all grew up with.

Switchers are more efficient, and be made smaller for a given capacity. This design is why Power Supplies for Cellphones or PCs are smaller. It's not so much of 'getting what you pay for' [or not], but because of design trends.

Read all about it here on Wikipedia...

Switched Mode Powser Supplies

[mskobier]

Engineer guy,
You are correct in the assessment of the "noise" coming from the swithced mode circuitry. This really was not that big of a supprise, as I have a few switched mode bench supplies in the 35 to 50 amp range. The difference is that they are designed to be used around radio equipment, with the appropriate filtering to reduce the radiated RF. Apparently, this battery charger was not "designed" to be used around that type of equipment. I remember some earlier computer power supplies were quite noisy, espically in the mid high frequency radio spectrum. Most if not all computer supplies now have to meet a certain maximum level of electronic noise.

In reality, the chargers noise is nothing more than an inconvience. I just plan my battery charging around the radio operations.

Mitch

[jss06]

Could you build a small faraday cage to put the charger in when you are recharging? That should eliminate the interferance.