I am using CG-340 universal charger to charge 6.0 Volt Ni-MH 2800mAh Battery Pack. The point I am confused at is that, when the chraging finishes, the green light starts tickling rather than going to “always green” state as written in the charger manual. In the manual it says that in case of Ni-MH batteries the charging light will goes to green permanently once the battery is completely charged. However, in my case it starts tickling.
Secondly, it just takes an hour to charge the battery pack. I set the amperage dial to 3A.
There are different kind of charging types. It sounds that you are using the fast charge mode. This means that you use C/1 (Capacity (amps) divide by 1). This is ok but NEVER go higher then C/1 so put the dail back to 2.8. As far as I know over charging can damage the cells. Or they may even explode!
You can also do a normal charge like C/10 where you apply just 280mA. This is better for the battery and you can charge overnight.
I don’t know the charger that you’re using but when most chargers are finished they will switch to tickle charge. This will keep the battery power to the max without damaging the battery.
About the charge time, when you put 2.8A to your battery of 2.8Ah it will be fully charged in one hour. Charging the same battery with 0.5A will take up to 5.6 hours.
** battery rate / charge rate = hours**
The question is regarding the charging rate. The charger offers a charging rate from 0.2A to 1.5A for NiMH batteries and has an auto power off after 2 hours feature.
For instance, I need to charge a 2800mA pack, and for that intention I set the charging rate to 0.3A so that a 10 hour approx charging time would be good for the life of the battery pack. But, since the Charger shuts off after every 2 hours, it has realistically become impossible to charge the packs on long duration charging rates. Setting the charging rate to 1.5A charges the pack well in an hour and some minutes but it makes the pack quite warm. Moreover, is charging at 1.5A a good practice for the life of the battery packs.
What charging rate should I use to charge my 2800mA & 4800mA NiMH packs keeping in view that the charger would shut off after 2 hours. Should I stick to the low charging rate methodology and keep switching the charger ON after very 2 hours, or should I rely on a higher charging rate?
