Safe to Charge?

I've got a Maha MH-C204F charger and some 1600mah batteries.

Would this (or any other) charger be able to safely take higher mah batteries, i.e. 2500mah and would they last proportionately longer before running out that the equivalent brand 1600mah?

Thanks in advance.

Your charger supplies 500ma to the battery per the manual -- http://www.starbatteries.com/mahmhcharman.html --
It would just take longer to charge the 2500mah batteries..

Thanks for the reply.

As a non-technical person, is the 500mA relevant to the power of the battery that can be charged, i.e. hypothetically could a 5000 mah battery be used in this charger?

Can anyone answer?

Hi John,

Depending on the question, the following may be of help.
http://www.rwc.yertiz.com/batart.htm

Best wishes,

Ray

Thanks for the reply Ray, but that site does not answer my specific question.

I didn't realise that it was such a hard question to answer!!!

Hi John,

If it is the correct web site for your charger that Duke linked to, the charger supplies a maximum of 500mA. I have not looked at how it decides that the battery is fully charged, but the chances are that you should be able to put any compatible chemistry cell, into the charger, and it will charge it. For your hypothetical 5Ah battery situation, if there is a timer in the charger, it may not fully charge the battery, also the charger may have other checking circuits. Some of those aspects are mentioned in the link I quoted.

The question then becomes one of how much effort I or others are prepared to put into researching the construction and operation of the charger, (and in trying to decide exactly what your hypothetical battery may be) and as far as I'm concerned, unless persuaded otherwise, this is about as far as I'm going in an open forum situation. The link was to give you some background to batteries/chargers, so that you could make your own guesses a bit better, and understand that for others to give a precise answer to your question may depend on information that you have not supplied. So, if I say 'yes, it will work fine', and then next week it goes to smoke, then you will blame me. If I say 'no-way' (the safe option), then someone will try it, and find it works just fine.

I can say, however, that _my_ hypothetical 5Ah battery will work fine in your charger ;-).


Best wishes,

Ray

Thanks Ray for your help.

I've just noticed that it appears that the maximum charge time is 160 minutes.
160 minutes is roughly 2.7 hours. 2.7 hours X 500 mA = 1350 mAh.

So it appears that it may not do a complete charge after all, yet it's still marketed with 2700 mAh at some websites!

Weird.

OK... the charger supplies 500mah... what that means is that it would take (everything being perfect) 4 hours to charge a 2000mah battery.. Think of it like plumbing.. the hose supplies 500 units and the bucket is 2000 units.. it takes a while to fill it up... The 500mah is the quick charge rate (fastest rate this charger will fill the bucket). After the bucket is full the charger drops down to 24ma which will keep the battery charged without damaging it. The chargers look at the voltage of the battery and when it reaches around 1.2v (usually about 1.4) it will go to the 24ma trickle charge. You can get charger that will supply 1000mah (1amp) and that would charge the batter in 2 hours. Anyway the point is the charger will charge the battery fully.. Some high speed chargers monitor the battery temperture. That's the really important thing. If the battery gets to hot (to hot to touch) it could kill the battery.

Hi John,

A lot of the sites will say whatever they want, in order to sell a product. Much of the manufacturer's literature is just plain wrong, too. That is why, if you are concerned, you test it out for yourself, as you are doing, ask the questions.

I bought, a few month's ago, a v-8000 Ni-Mh AA/AAA charger from 7day shop,
http://http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=777_3&products_id=101059 with a load of batteries. They are OK to deal with, if you have not used them before, but delivery is not 'next day'. The charger works fine, and will run off a 12V car battery, too. I'm no too sure of the detail in their advertising jargon, but at their prices, and with the 30day trial period, it's not a problem to me.

Best wishes,

Ray