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« on: December 10, 2010, 09:11:04 PM »
Wall chargers are not crap... just not as convenient. You can easily make the arguement using a wall charger will take better care of your battery. Smart chargers can be set with currents over an Amp.. excess charging at higher amps is what will degrade the battery, and most cheap smart chargers cut off based on a temperature sensor... i.e. when the battery gets hot or i.e. is already overcharging. Using temperature of the battery to determine state of charge is very inaccurate, some charges will be way undercharged and other times can be well overcharged. Wall chargers are typically rated for much lower current around 200ma or .2 amps (only a trickle). At this low of a current when the battery is charged the low current will just float across the battery and is not enough to drive further chemical reaction. In essence you can leave a wall charger on long past the battery being charged and you don't need to worry about overcharge. I often use wall chargers overnight.. batteries don't even get warm. The back of the wall charger should state the current output and you'll be able to tell if its too high to leave your battery on a trickle charge. Anything around .2A is pretty safe for a nimh.
So both have advantages... wall charger wont hurt your battery but takes forever.
Smart charger takes much less time (if set to a higher current) and the higher current in some cases can recondition a battery but they can also overcharge and degrade the battery, or possibly undercharge.
Don't even bother with nicads... memory effect is to prevalent, basically useless unless you have something that can fully discharge them, just running them until your gun stops doesn't discharge them all the way.
Nimh are pretty darn good, plus the voltage per cell works out to 8.4V which is what just about all AEG high torque motors are designed to run at. Higher voltage batteries like lipo's and even 9.6 nimh will shorten the life of your AEG motor.
Lipo's are the best performance and running at a higher voltage will increase your rate of fire, but requires individual cell balance charging.. essentially each cell needs to be charged individually to ensure they are all charged, otherwise when you charge the battery only one of the 3 cells will take the charge or vice versa. If you use lipos get a balancer card or use a balance charger.
And please don't listen to 10 year olds on youtube.