Charging At 2.0a

Gizmo said:

I have been playing with the LUC charger and noticed that you can charge at 2.0AMPS and full charge takes just under a hour, however the battery gets a tad on the warm side.

Is this very unsafe? It has 1.0A charge as a option too which doesn't make them warm..

Any advice?

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The battery Data Sheet specifies maximum charge current. Warmish is 100% normal, hot obviously not. If the battery specs (data sheet) states a lower maximum charge current, it is not unsafe, you will only compromise the battery's life cycle.

Thanks Johan, for the informative information..

General rule of thumb is not to charge more than the battery's mAh rating - so with a 1300mAh battery you should not exceed 1,3 Amps for example

Some batteries can be charged at double (or more) their mAh rating, but then they will specifically state that in the documentation on somewhere on the battery - but the default is 1x the mAh rating.

Having said that, the lower amps you charge the battery at, the longer it will last (in terms of charge/discharge cycles)

Thanks for the input, as for the battery's longevity that really doesn't bug me. At the rate they evolving if they last 6 months that's more then enough for me.

Yep, true - the only thing is then not to let it get too hot - thermal runaway (when the temp gets high enough to cause a chemical reaction in the battery - which causes heat itself, round and round it goes... ) can happen at high temperatures, but for IMR's that is something like 500C - so when the plastic starts melting off, it's too hot

Edit, here is an excellent resource on the subject if you feel like some light reading
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/lithium_ion_safety_concerns

Edit2 : Xtar makes chargers that monitor the temp of the battery and switches off before it gets too hot