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Weak fasttech charger?

rj9923

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So I decided to get a single channel charger from fasttech for four reasons; it was cheap, it is much smaller than my homemade charger (and therefore portable), and it doesn't scrape off the wrapper from batteries (like my homemade charger). I just got some new batteries and wanted to treat them well (not scrape off the wrapper).

So far, the fasttech charger works as advertised. It charges at roughly half an amp, and stops at 4.2 volts (tested both with a multimeter). But that's the thing; since it only charges at half an amp, it takes about 7 hours to charge a single (3100 mah)18650 battery, as opposed to about 2 hours at 1.5 amps on my homemade charger. I know about electricity, but not so much about batteries. Please tell me, is such a long charging period going to be detrimental to my new batteries in any way? Thank you
 

gopher_byrd

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The 0.5A charger puts less stress on your batteries than your 1.5A homemade charger. I always charge at 0.5A, but I have plenty of spare batteries so time is not of the essence for me.
 

nightshard

It's VG/PG not PG/VG
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My charger lets me choose between 0.5 and 1 and unless I'm in a hurry or need batteries straight away I always choose 0.5
 

UncleRJ

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I have a four channel Xtar charger and I keep it set at 0.50 amps while alternating between the four batteries.

My travel charger is a two channel Xtar and I tend to set that one at 1.0 amps to make sure that I always have a fully charged spare.
 

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