@EEVblog I just wanted to let you know that this old video of yours is very exciting to me and still relevant today. The modern chargers are probably still the same.
i dont mean to be off topic but does anyone know a method to log back into an instagram account?? I was stupid lost my account password. I appreciate any tips you can give me
@Quentin Jairo I really appreciate your reply. I got to the site through google and im trying it out atm. Takes a while so I will reply here later with my results.
Mistakes from people who have years of experience just show us newbies in electronics that they happen and not to get discouraged. Although a video on how to recover from common mistakes like this would be cool.
Eight years on and this video is still useful, I managed to find part number for a blown chip thanks to Dave... BTW, open source firmware is available for this charger as mentioned in posts below...
I managed to get a great deal on a used JBC station a couple of years back. One of the best hobby purchases I've ever made. It feels a bit silly to say but soldering is just so much more fun with it. You can change the tip and be back to soldering in literally 10 seconds. The pen is thin, light and you get your fingers close to the solder joint (good for those of use with shaky hands). If you get the chance pick one up, it's well worth it.
Also known as a polyswitch as I mentioned. Its is 2.2A trip, 1.1A hold current. You don't use these for temperature cutoff, they are overcurrent protection. It is in series with the balance resistor network.
got one of these as well, love it! But it did come with a broken 2S balance plug. After getting in there and resoldering one of the wires myself it has never let me down!
Thanks much again Dave. I remembered this teardown after frazzing the 'source' resistor on my B6. This happened because I discharged a battery to 'storage' state and the charger was super hot. I ASSumed that using a big al. heatsink would help, but didn't know that the TO-220's needed the original electrically isolated thermal transfer tape. A warning for modders at least. On hindsight a fan may have been a better option.
Hi Dave, the DA2:2 (LM2904) at the battery input needs no feedback, it's only used as comparator. When the battery is connected in reverse polarity, the mosfet VT8 stays switched off and the discharge mosfet (constant current load) is protected. The signal I_ERR acts only like an emergency shutdown. In normal operation the voltage level of I_ERR is quite low and can't switch on VT3. Greetings from one of your german viewers.
Old video but perfect viewing time for me, about to buy something very similar to this. Love your tear downs, especially the way you explain the circuit diagrams. Thank you Dave, your the ducks nuts down under!
Got that FDS mosfet damaged due to reverse battery connection, couldn't see the number of the part, remembered Dave has a teardown for this one, revisited video and here I have it FDS6680. Thank you Dave..
60 bucks gets you a 20a charge, 20a discharge. Turnigy reaktor 300w. The 20a discharge actually dumps the connected battery back into the power supply.
This is especially useful insight. I'm in the market for a lipo balance charger for my own DIY recycled lipo ebike packs. Seeing a teardown and hearing your own praise and critique is especially reassuring.
We use those JBC stations at work. They are superb!!!! You got your self perfect soldering tool. After spending few years with this JBC tool I do not want to think about Weller or Ersa any more. Unfortunately I cant afford this JBC and at home I use Weller :(
I did the same thing removing the LCD from one of the Hobbyking power meter/analyser units. It didn't have a backlight so I was going to swap in another LCD. Finally got it done only to realise the case wouldn't fit back together... Standard iron tip too so I made a bigger mess than you did :D Nothing some 30awg wire directly to the microcontroller pins can't fix!
I usually get to the magic 300 mark in a few 10's of minutes. Depends on the time of day I upload it! No idea how many people are signed up for the auto email notification though.
Hi Dave, what you identified as the regulation loop and really like, is actually something completely different. The FET and the OPamp on the Battery output are the reverse-battery-protection. Similar to the circuit on the input, only that this one uses the opamp. The I_ERR signal isn't the current feedback. It is only an overcurrent-shutdown. VT4 kills the PWM when the current get's to high. All Regulation is done by the microcontroller adjusting it's pwm according to the adc inputs.
Yeah, pretty embarrassing. Normally wouldn't botch it like that. But I can blame the new iron I got a bit overzealous with! While I'm at it, I'll also blame the fact that I was recording at the same time, in a hurry, and probably crap quality PCB material for good measure :->
The only soldering stations which will heat up faster are made by Weller. The feature which really sets these apart, though, is that the tip and heating element are one unit, with a fully integrated glass bead thermocouple which provides ACTUAL tip temperature.
It is good to see that it is not only me who accidentally destroys pcb pads whilst desoldering! Recently, I 've some succes using an clothes iron as pre-heater. Yes, cutting the pins is a good idea too, but that's not always an option.
I'm guessing that the Tunigy might have a maximum charge power setting, so limits the charge current based on voltage. i.e. the current drops from the 6A maximum based on the voltage.
It would be interesting to see a rough costing on Bom in this product. They must be making bugger all after costs. Thanks Dave for yet another interesting teardown.
That is the newer PCB, I have one with the old one. On the first discharge it toasted one of the SMD resistors. Also the 3 pin serial data port was not connected I had to add some parts to make it work.
Woah never knew this video existed, from all those years back! I have the newer version of this charger and was just googling information for it and this came up, very interesting to see.
Them other footprints near the DC jack are actually for a 12v input. I have a similar charger with the same design and it has an optional 12v supply with alligator clips for 12v lead acid batteries.
Great teardown! I didn't understand it all, but eventually i'll understand more. I guess the end of charge detection is all in the firmware, even for the lion-cell charging? As others wrote, it would be appreciated if you show how to fix the PCB, even though I realise it might get ugly. I once did a similar thing to my commodore 64, while desolding a ram chip. My fix was worse than ugly!
It does. This charger will only charge at 50 watts max, so the firmware will automatically drop the current if the power output is too high. For example, when charging a 6-cell LiPo pack with a maximum pack voltage of 25.2 volts and a minimum pack voltage of 18 volts (3.0v is the min. safe discharge voltage per cell), the charge current will be limited to between ~2.7a - 2.0a, depending on the state of charge of the pack, regardless if you set the charge current higher.
That's why I put USB in quotation marks and then said it's really a TTL-level serial signal. :P It's labelled as USB in the menu option. Further, I have a recent one (just bought it a couple months ago) and no modification was required. I know the mod you are talking about, but that's for the older version. The current one Hobbyking sells is already set up internally. You just need the TTL/USB converter and the free software (I can't remember what it's called off the top of my head).
This connector is also the "USB" (really a TTL-level serial signal) output for software monitoring. A simple $3 USB-TTL serial adapter from ebay is all it takes, and changing a menu setting from Temp. to USB.
I have this same charger but in the 80w version. It has an XT-60 input connector instead of a coaxial DC connector. Even though it is supposed to be capable of a 2 amp discharge I was never able to get it to discharge above 1 amp.
Hi Dave! Just the other day I ripped a load of hole plating out of a board by being over zealous and felt rather foolish. Kicking myself and telling myself 'real' engineer wouldn't do that and now I feel much better. It happens to real engineers too.
Really interesting teardown, I've actually been waiting for this one! Just a quick question - is the LCD used just a standard HD44780 based module? When you opened the thing up, I ran to my parts drawer and pulled one out, and they look exactly the same! This thing looks like it's built to a hobby grade, rather than for large scale manufacture - hell, they even use an AVR (never seen one of those in a commercial product like this before, but tons of 'em in hacker DIY projects)!
The HR30-110 @9:15 in the video is a Polymer PTC thermistor from ShenZhen HuiRui Electronics Material CO.,LTD ... A PTC thermistor like this is usually used to limit current indirectly through I-squared-R heating and its positive temperature coefficient of resistance... could it also be used for over temperature cutoff? Maybe it's just for current limiting. In case of short circuit?
You Certainly did get a bit overzealous with that new iron Dave. Done it myself a few times 'Wick of the thick prick' is my mantra before I unsolder a long sil strip like that these days. Never mind mate just set your time circuits to 10 DEC 2012 and hit the magic 88mph :D
I am an rc and electronic hobbyst as you can tell i am very glad with this video XD
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Thank you for this! I actually was hacking the firmware of this a while back, but being an electronics-ignorant programmer I never did understand the circtuit at all. This explains a lot though, and it should help me make this into a LED driver. Maybe. You can already drive high-power LEDs with this via the NiMh charging mode but its current-range is not that useful and it flickers. If the entire regulation is microcontroller-regulated that should be fixable with lower gain, again, maybe.
Nice charger nice video Maybe an idea to tear down a laptop battery..they are so much more than a pack of li ion cells. The battery managment chips are very interesting devices!
yeah, i had a B6 too. i broke the first one i had after a week of use so i took it apart and fixed it. i enede up breaking it again later :P i was able to find both of the ones i got on ebay for $17 free shipping.
I've just brought one of these Accucell 6 Chargers since I'm getting quite a collection of different batteries (Li-Ion, Pb, Li-Po etc) and had nothing to charge them all with. For £20 it's worth the money. It's got quite a few features and it does what it says on the tin. However one thing I wont be buying again are batteries from off the Internet or more specifically, eBay (China Bay). I purchased TWO sealed lead acid batteries from eBay this year. One was a 12V 7aH and the other a 6V 10A and both are crap. The 12V SLA Battery would charge to 13.8V and then crash down to 10.5V as soon as it came off the charger and the 6V SLA battery charges from 6.5V to 7.2V in 23 seconds according to my charger and as soon as the battery comes off the charger, it's back down to 6.5V again. Absolute crap. And the same goes for 18650 batteries... I brought 2 of these 18650 Batteries from China Bay and guess what - they were fakes. I'll stick to getting my batteries from a trusted local Burglar Alarm Suppliers.
I picked up a Turnigy Accucel 8150 a while back. Very nice, has a lot more power for only a few more bucks. The only thing I hate about these is that they don't have the 110V input option like some others, but for the price will just have to put up with the extra hassle.
How do you feel about the HobbyKing company in general? I've gotten mixed reviews from people I've spoken to - usually the good is based on price and the bad is based on their blatant copying of other companies' product and general lack of quality control and customer support, though apparently the QC has improved to some degree. I also found that battery manufacturer ThunderPower specifically says not to charge their batteries past 1C charge rate using Turnigy Chargers.
You should check out the Toshiba Thrive 10.1" some time. One of, if not THE, easiest tablets to service on the market. Even if it's a busted glass/display one off of eBay.
Hi Dave, would it be possible to turn this thing into a cheap lab power supply with adjustable current / voltage? After all, in a way that is what it is designed for. Would the circuit be good enough to implement some fast short circuit protection? Or just to have a reasonably stable power source? Cheers!
iCharger 106B+ (as all the iChargers) is a completely diff design. Smokinging the input side is common if you're running a cheap ac switching supply voltage close to the input margin on the charger, as they typically peak over the rating, and the 106B+ is sensitive to that. Also plugging cheap ac ps into charger live, etc. Google "rc groups icharger" for the thread with the repair info.
Thanks for the teardown, I understand about 50% of what you talk about, but it's interesting! I have a similar one of these and it no longer reads one of the cells in any of my LiPo batteries. What component would cause that loss of reading, as my charger is now effectively useless for 3s batteries?
Nice! I have a similar Mystery charger which I also very much like (the software is really quite impressive). Mine also shipped unlocked, so I got to customize the boot screen. :) Unfortunately, it also shipped with factory _copied_ EEPROM values, including balance calibration. It seems many copies are like this. This lead to people "resistor modding" them to try to correct it, but in reality, there is a service menu which you can get if the EEPROM isn't yet set. Search "iMax B6 service menu".
I ordered the iMax B6 on Ebay, but i got a counterfeit unit then i ordered another one from a different vender. they told me itwas a real one. again a counterfeit one. i am on my 3rd one but this one is the B6 mini and hope its realnone.
Yea, this is old, but I'll still note that one of the best ways to get a real iMax is through HobbyKing. Their clone prices are the same as any eBay seller, but they actually sell both real and cloned units and make it clear which is which. Great place for to get hobby chargers. These Turnigy units are basically a high-quality clone of the B6, as Dave discovers from the schematic, so these are a fine choice as well.
I don't think HobbyKing is even a manufacturer, just a distributor. So how could they rip off your (as yet unnamed) friend? If some other company ripped off your (probably non-existent) friend, then you should tell HobbyKing, so they could look into it. But Dave is right - if you're unwilling to name the friend or the product, then you're likely just lying.
Hey Dave! I loved the review so I just ordered one of these in Greece (local retailer not HK). Apparently they are in low availability so I don't know when I will actually get it in my hands. It was 35euros (about 40USD I think) so It's probably an original turnigy and not a copy, but is there a way to check it out for sure? Some kind of marking perhaps?
Dave, try this unit /watch?v=7xyb1vjugb0 it's not as precise as Hakko, JBC, Weller etc., but it works. IMO it's much better than solder wick. When I got mine, I desoldered several PCI and SDRAM sockets. One 16-pin header would be super easy to desolder.
Had this charger for a while, its a goodun. Havent wanted to pull it apart cos its a damn useful jigger to have. The number of random batterys ive charged with it.... thanks dave for givin me a bo peep
Its not just mine then, I have this and ,my brother has the Imax b6 and I found he could charge my 3s 2200 batteries faster than my turnigy, I was wondering if it was faulty because they are so similar. Im also not sure how accurate the milliamps put back in is as I get some odd readings off it.
Actually, a lot of their through hole components look improperly soldered. I see PTH pads so the solder should have been flowed through. (and I see you just found it at this point anyway)
those main battery connectors soldered to the board (but not thru-hole), are NOT doing their job. They break easily after some use and what's worse, they're done that way even for higher-priced chargers, which is a shame.
Hi Dave, I would like to ask you whether you would do a tutorial on SMPS Compensation Networks. I am currently working on a project requiring a buck converter and ran into this sort of trouble. If you have a look at the SiP12202 or IR3640, there is a circuitry called Compensation Network that Im not absolutely sure about. Thanks in advance for any info, Jarek Malec, Czech Republic
Accucell 6 error messages, we are the error for buying Hobbyking Garbage. I Purchased a Accucell 6 and getting error messages. Tried to contect Hobbyking and have been waiting for over a week, no answer!! I think it’s what do you want you knew it was Garbage when you purchased it and now you want us to fix it?? You Purchased it Thank you!! They don’t give shit!! I’m very disappointed!! You get what you pay for. Go ahead and Purchase their Garbage so they can laugh at you to!!
Hello. My Accucell charges my 2S to 4.15 ; 4.17 . On the display it shows 4.20 ; 4.20 . Is there any way to fix that ? Calibration is not an option as I'm already at -20. Found this video. Is the guy right ? ...replacing the 4051 could help ?
Jesus it get's worse. How did this thing pass quality control inspection?? Cold joints all around and not enough solder. Very unacceptable for power electronics.
I have the exact same one. Had it on LiPo for the longest time. Just today, I fired it up to do some LiPos but the display now reads LiFe. ??? What happened? Despite the display no longer reading LiPO, is it safe to do those with the LiFe showing?
@EEVblog
I just wanted to let you know that this old video of yours is very exciting to me and still relevant today. The modern chargers are probably still the same.
and again for me in 2020!
i dont mean to be off topic but does anyone know a method to log back into an instagram account??
I was stupid lost my account password. I appreciate any tips you can give me
@Rhys Emerson Instablaster =)
@Quentin Jairo I really appreciate your reply. I got to the site through google and im trying it out atm.
Takes a while so I will reply here later with my results.
@Quentin Jairo it did the trick and I actually got access to my account again. Im so happy!
Thanks so much, you saved my ass !
The holes at 11:27 are for the AC powered version which has a 12v power pack inside the case with wires connecting it
Mistakes from people who have years of experience just show us newbies in electronics that they happen and not to get discouraged. Although a video on how to recover from common mistakes like this would be cool.
Eight years on and this video is still useful, I managed to find part number for a blown chip thanks to Dave...
BTW, open source firmware is available for this charger as mentioned in posts below...
I managed to get a great deal on a used JBC station a couple of years back. One of the best hobby purchases I've ever made. It feels a bit silly to say but soldering is just so much more fun with it. You can change the tip and be back to soldering in literally 10 seconds. The pen is thin, light and you get your fingers close to the solder joint (good for those of use with shaky hands). If you get the chance pick one up, it's well worth it.
great charger, ive had mine 5 years and its still going strong.
Also known as a polyswitch as I mentioned. Its is 2.2A trip, 1.1A hold current. You don't use these for temperature cutoff, they are overcurrent protection. It is in series with the balance resistor network.
got one of these as well, love it! But it did come with a broken 2S balance plug. After getting in there and resoldering one of the wires myself it has never let me down!
Thanks much again Dave. I remembered this teardown after frazzing the 'source' resistor on my B6. This happened because I discharged a battery to 'storage' state and the charger was super hot. I ASSumed that using a big al. heatsink would help, but didn't know that the TO-220's needed the original electrically isolated thermal transfer tape.
A warning for modders at least. On hindsight a fan may have been a better option.
Their prices and awesome shopping cart that lists how much weight left for the same postage wins it over for me.
Hi Dave, the DA2:2 (LM2904) at the battery input needs no feedback, it's only used as comparator. When the battery is connected in reverse polarity, the mosfet VT8 stays switched off and the discharge mosfet (constant current load) is protected. The signal I_ERR acts only like an emergency shutdown. In normal operation the voltage level of I_ERR is quite low and can't switch on VT3. Greetings from one of your german viewers.
Old video but perfect viewing time for me, about to buy something very similar to this.
Love your tear downs, especially the way you explain the circuit diagrams. Thank you Dave, your the ducks nuts down under!
Got that FDS mosfet damaged due to reverse battery connection, couldn't see the number of the part, remembered Dave has a teardown for this one, revisited video and here I have it FDS6680. Thank you Dave..
60 bucks gets you a 20a charge, 20a discharge. Turnigy reaktor 300w. The 20a discharge actually dumps the connected battery back into the power supply.
This is especially useful insight. I'm in the market for a lipo balance charger for my own DIY recycled lipo ebike packs. Seeing a teardown and hearing your own praise and critique is especially reassuring.
We use those JBC stations at work. They are superb!!!! You got your self perfect soldering tool. After spending few years with this JBC tool I do not want to think about Weller or Ersa any more. Unfortunately I cant afford this JBC and at home I use Weller :(
I did the same thing removing the LCD from one of the Hobbyking power meter/analyser units. It didn't have a backlight so I was going to swap in another LCD. Finally got it done only to realise the case wouldn't fit back together... Standard iron tip too so I made a bigger mess than you did :D Nothing some 30awg wire directly to the microcontroller pins can't fix!
I usually get to the magic 300 mark in a few 10's of minutes. Depends on the time of day I upload it! No idea how many people are signed up for the auto email notification though.
I got lost on that schematic... It's clever, but it's confusing... After seeing how it looks inside i decided to get one! Thanks DAVE!
Hi Dave, what you identified as the regulation loop and really like, is actually something completely different. The FET and the OPamp on the Battery output are the reverse-battery-protection. Similar to the circuit on the input, only that this one uses the opamp.
The I_ERR signal isn't the current feedback. It is only an overcurrent-shutdown. VT4 kills the PWM when the current get's to high. All Regulation is done by the microcontroller adjusting it's pwm according to the adc inputs.
*drool* oh man do I want that soldering iron! I'm amazed by the warm-up time on that thing.
Yeah, pretty embarrassing. Normally wouldn't botch it like that. But I can blame the new iron I got a bit overzealous with! While I'm at it, I'll also blame the fact that I was recording at the same time, in a hurry, and probably crap quality PCB material for good measure :->
The only soldering stations which will heat up faster are made by Weller. The feature which really sets these apart, though, is that the tip and heating element are one unit, with a fully integrated glass bead thermocouple which provides ACTUAL tip temperature.
It is good to see that it is not only me who accidentally destroys pcb pads whilst desoldering! Recently, I 've some succes using an clothes iron as pre-heater. Yes, cutting the pins is a good idea too, but that's not always an option.
I'm guessing that the Tunigy might have a maximum charge power setting, so limits the charge current based on voltage. i.e. the current drops from the 6A maximum based on the voltage.
It would be interesting to see a rough costing on Bom in this product. They must be making bugger all after costs. Thanks Dave for yet another interesting teardown.
That is the newer PCB, I have one with the old one.
On the first discharge it toasted one of the SMD resistors.
Also the 3 pin serial data port was not connected I had to add some parts to make it work.
Woah never knew this video existed, from all those years back! I have the newer version of this charger and was just googling information for it and this came up, very interesting to see.
Them other footprints near the DC jack are actually for a 12v input. I have a similar charger with the same design and it has an optional 12v supply with alligator clips for 12v lead acid batteries.
Great teardown! I didn't understand it all, but eventually i'll understand more. I guess the end of charge detection is all in the firmware, even for the lion-cell charging? As others wrote, it would be appreciated if you show how to fix the PCB, even though I realise it might get ugly. I once did a similar thing to my commodore 64, while desolding a ram chip. My fix was worse than ugly!
It does. This charger will only charge at 50 watts max, so the firmware will automatically drop the current if the power output is too high. For example, when charging a 6-cell LiPo pack with a maximum pack voltage of 25.2 volts and a minimum pack voltage of 18 volts (3.0v is the min. safe discharge voltage per cell), the charge current will be limited to between ~2.7a - 2.0a, depending on the state of charge of the pack, regardless if you set the charge current higher.
That's why I put USB in quotation marks and then said it's really a TTL-level serial signal. :P It's labelled as USB in the menu option. Further, I have a recent one (just bought it a couple months ago) and no modification was required. I know the mod you are talking about, but that's for the older version. The current one Hobbyking sells is already set up internally. You just need the TTL/USB converter and the free software (I can't remember what it's called off the top of my head).
Would really like to see more chargers being tested. With the ebike movement it's a growing need for good cheap and fast chargers like this.
This connector is also the "USB" (really a TTL-level serial signal) output for software monitoring. A simple $3 USB-TTL serial adapter from ebay is all it takes, and changing a menu setting from Temp. to USB.
HobbyKing would be buying it for maybe $12-$14 As always, the final retailer makes the most profit.
I have this same charger but in the 80w version. It has an XT-60 input connector instead of a coaxial DC connector. Even though it is supposed to be capable of a 2 amp discharge I was never able to get it to discharge above 1 amp.
All charger who discharger troug inside resistors is limited by power also, so he can discharge 10W , so if you drain 1A max it's voltage max 10V .
Finally a review of a product I have!
Thank you very much!
So, I'd expect to see a followup video of Dave repairing the LCD connector in near future
This one suppose to check internal resistance compare to others brand in the same price range.
You are just alway spot on. Thanks for sharing.
Just wondering, how would you repair those lcd pads?
I do use a computer PSU for home-charging without problems, but when it smoked it was when connecting to at car battery.
That's an impressive iron with an awfully Weller-ish looking tip. Look forward to seeing the review.
Hi Dave,
You should use a proper desoldering station for what you've tried to achieved...
Hi Dave! Just the other day I ripped a load of hole plating out of a board by being over zealous and felt rather foolish. Kicking myself and telling myself 'real' engineer wouldn't do that and now I feel much better. It happens to real engineers too.
Really interesting teardown, I've actually been waiting for this one! Just a quick question - is the LCD used just a standard HD44780 based module? When you opened the thing up, I ran to my parts drawer and pulled one out, and they look exactly the same!
This thing looks like it's built to a hobby grade, rather than for large scale manufacture - hell, they even use an AVR (never seen one of those in a commercial product like this before, but tons of 'em in hacker DIY projects)!
The HR30-110 @9:15 in the video is a Polymer PTC thermistor from ShenZhen HuiRui Electronics Material CO.,LTD ... A PTC thermistor like this is usually used to limit current indirectly through I-squared-R heating and its positive temperature coefficient of resistance... could it also be used for over temperature cutoff? Maybe it's just for current limiting. In case of short circuit?
I literally just ripped one of these (But the ECO6-10) version apart 5 minutes ago to check it out, wish I had've checked TH-cam first! :D
You Certainly did get a bit overzealous with that new iron Dave.
Done it myself a few times
'Wick of the thick prick' is my mantra before I unsolder a long sil strip like that these days.
Never mind mate just set your time circuits to 10 DEC 2012 and hit the magic 88mph :D
I am an rc and electronic hobbyst as you can tell i am very glad with this video XD
Thank you for this! I actually was hacking the firmware of this a while back, but being an electronics-ignorant programmer I never did understand the circtuit at all. This explains a lot though, and it should help me make this into a LED driver. Maybe. You can already drive high-power LEDs with this via the NiMh charging mode but its current-range is not that useful and it flickers. If the entire regulation is microcontroller-regulated that should be fixable with lower gain, again, maybe.
Dave, great teardown. Did you know this thing has a calibration mode? Google "turnigy accucel 6 calibration".
Great teardown Dave, can I ask that you do more RC electronics then I can feed both my habits at once, RC and Electronics vids :) keep 'em coming
Nice charger nice video
Maybe an idea to tear down a laptop battery..they are so much more than a pack of li ion cells.
The battery managment chips are very interesting devices!
The iMAX B6 is the OEM one ;)
Did you clean off the silicone TIM and reapply it dave?
Wow. I have IMAX B6 Charger/Ballancer and inside it very similar to your Turnigy Accucel 6 ))
yeah, i had a B6 too. i broke the first one i had after a week of use so i took it apart and fixed it. i enede up breaking it again later :P i was able to find both of the ones i got on ebay for $17 free shipping.
I've just brought one of these Accucell 6 Chargers since I'm getting quite a collection of different batteries (Li-Ion, Pb, Li-Po etc) and had nothing to charge them all with. For £20 it's worth the money. It's got quite a few features and it does what it says on the tin. However one thing I wont be buying again are batteries from off the Internet or more specifically, eBay (China Bay). I purchased TWO sealed lead acid batteries from eBay this year. One was a 12V 7aH and the other a 6V 10A and both are crap. The 12V SLA Battery would charge to 13.8V and then crash down to 10.5V as soon as it came off the charger and the 6V SLA battery charges from 6.5V to 7.2V in 23 seconds according to my charger and as soon as the battery comes off the charger, it's back down to 6.5V again. Absolute crap. And the same goes for 18650 batteries... I brought 2 of these 18650 Batteries from China Bay and guess what - they were fakes. I'll stick to getting my batteries from a trusted local Burglar Alarm Suppliers.
i took one of these apart a while ago. a little dodgy but much better than i expected
Great Job Dave! I just love watching your videos. Keep up the good work mate!
I picked up a Turnigy Accucel 8150 a while back. Very nice, has a lot more power for only a few more bucks. The only thing I hate about these is that they don't have the 110V input option like some others, but for the price will just have to put up with the extra hassle.
How do you feel about the HobbyKing company in general? I've gotten mixed reviews from people I've spoken to - usually the good is based on price and the bad is based on their blatant copying of other companies' product and general lack of quality control and customer support, though apparently the QC has improved to some degree. I also found that battery manufacturer ThunderPower specifically says not to charge their batteries past 1C charge rate using Turnigy Chargers.
i wanna see a teardown on the JBC soldering station, I'm guessing it's a souped up SMPS inside!!
You should check out the Toshiba Thrive 10.1" some time. One of, if not THE, easiest tablets to service on the market. Even if it's a busted glass/display one off of eBay.
Now you can do a video on how you repair the LCD pcb pads ! cool.
Hi Dave, would it be possible to turn this thing into a cheap lab power supply with adjustable current / voltage? After all, in a way that is what it is designed for. Would the circuit be good enough to implement some fast short circuit protection? Or just to have a reasonably stable power source? Cheers!
I clicked within about 15 seconds of getting the email. Nothing else to do at the time so why not watch straight away :)
iCharger 106B+ (as all the iChargers) is a completely diff design. Smokinging the input side is common if you're running a cheap ac switching supply voltage close to the input margin on the charger, as they typically peak over the rating, and the 106B+ is sensitive to that. Also plugging cheap ac ps into charger live, etc. Google "rc groups icharger" for the thread with the repair info.
Thanks for the teardown, I understand about 50% of what you talk about, but it's interesting! I have a similar one of these and it no longer reads one of the cells in any of my LiPo batteries. What component would cause that loss of reading, as my charger is now effectively useless for 3s batteries?
Nice! I have a similar Mystery charger which I also very much like (the software is really quite impressive). Mine also shipped unlocked, so I got to customize the boot screen. :) Unfortunately, it also shipped with factory _copied_ EEPROM values, including balance calibration. It seems many copies are like this. This lead to people "resistor modding" them to try to correct it, but in reality, there is a service menu which you can get if the EEPROM isn't yet set. Search "iMax B6 service menu".
No vacuum desoldering tool? Why not get a Aoyue 474 or clone from eBay and do a review of it as well? Wouldn't mind seeing that.
I think the polyswitch is laid down against the array of SMT resistors to act as an overtemperature cutoff.
I ordered the iMax B6 on Ebay, but i got a counterfeit unit then i ordered another one from a different vender. they told me itwas a real one. again a counterfeit one. i am on my 3rd one but this one is the B6 mini and hope its realnone.
Yea, this is old, but I'll still note that one of the best ways to get a real iMax is through HobbyKing. Their clone prices are the same as any eBay seller, but they actually sell both real and cloned units and make it clear which is which. Great place for to get hobby chargers. These Turnigy units are basically a high-quality clone of the B6, as Dave discovers from the schematic, so these are a fine choice as well.
Would be nice to see how to fix fallen off traces after such an accident :)
In the Netherlands for sale as Voltcraft Multilader B5 sold bij Conrad.
I don't think HobbyKing is even a manufacturer, just a distributor. So how could they rip off your (as yet unnamed) friend? If some other company ripped off your (probably non-existent) friend, then you should tell HobbyKing, so they could look into it. But Dave is right - if you're unwilling to name the friend or the product, then you're likely just lying.
Very nice teardown...... Is there one like that on a Icharger 106b+, as one of my mosfett smoked?
Soldapult. I don;t care how many gimmicks they throw our way, the old fashioned manual de-soldering pump still does the best job.
Curious to see how you make the repair to the PCB.
Dave, don't you have something like the Hakko Desoldering gun, I have one and it works great.
That TO-220 on the right looks like it doesn't have one pin soldered in.
Hey Dave! I loved the review so I just ordered one of these in Greece (local retailer not HK). Apparently they are in low availability so I don't know when I will actually get it in my hands. It was 35euros (about 40USD I think) so It's probably an original turnigy and not a copy, but is there a way to check it out for sure? Some kind of marking perhaps?
I wonder if I'm the only one thinking "PEEL OFF THE PLASTIC OFF THE LCD!" :D
The pro Ersa stations are very similar. Metcals are still superior though
Did no one ever teach you how to look after soldering iron tips?
Dave, try this unit /watch?v=7xyb1vjugb0 it's not as precise as Hakko, JBC, Weller etc., but it works. IMO it's much better than solder wick. When I got mine, I desoldered several PCI and SDRAM sockets. One 16-pin header would be super easy to desolder.
Had this charger for a while, its a goodun. Havent wanted to pull it apart cos its a damn useful jigger to have. The number of random batterys ive charged with it.... thanks dave for givin me a bo peep
Its not just mine then, I have this and ,my brother has the Imax b6 and I found he could charge my 3s 2200 batteries faster than my turnigy, I was wondering if it was faulty because they are so similar. Im also not sure how accurate the milliamps put back in is as I get some odd readings off it.
Actually, a lot of their through hole components look improperly soldered. I see PTH pads so the solder should have been flowed through. (and I see you just found it at this point anyway)
What type of power supply did you use Dave?
those main battery connectors soldered to the board (but not thru-hole), are NOT doing their job. They break easily after some use and what's worse, they're done that way even for higher-priced chargers, which is a shame.
Hi Dave,
I would like to ask you whether you would do a tutorial on SMPS Compensation Networks. I am currently working on a project requiring a buck converter and ran into this sort of trouble. If you have a look at the SiP12202 or IR3640, there is a circuitry called Compensation Network that Im not absolutely sure about.
Thanks in advance for any info,
Jarek Malec,
Czech Republic
Accucell 6 error messages, we are the error for buying Hobbyking Garbage. I Purchased a Accucell 6 and getting error messages. Tried to contect Hobbyking and have been waiting for over a week, no answer!! I think it’s what do you want you knew it was Garbage when you purchased it and now you want us to fix it?? You Purchased it Thank you!! They don’t give shit!! I’m very disappointed!! You get what you pay for. Go ahead and Purchase their Garbage so they can laugh at you to!!
It's funny how you have to disassemble it to remove the LCD protector :P
Like to know how you fixed that soldering issue?
Hello.
My Accucell charges my 2S to 4.15 ; 4.17 . On the display it shows 4.20 ; 4.20 .
Is there any way to fix that ? Calibration is not an option as I'm already at -20.
Found this video. Is the guy right ? ...replacing the 4051 could help ?
I didn't understand how it actually regulates (measures) the output current using the error signal. Can someone enlighten me?
could u do a teardown of the cellpro multi4 charger by revolectrics. it claims to be agood, more expensive charger. thanks. ur good !!
WOW absolutely horrendous soldering on those through-hole parts.
Jesus it get's worse. How did this thing pass quality control inspection?? Cold joints all around and not enough solder. Very unacceptable for power electronics.
mikeissweet Yeah, usually Dave calls rubbish anything that is not top quality... but recommends this instead!?
Its nice to know even the pros fuck up sometimes
I have the exact same one. Had it on LiPo for the longest time. Just today, I fired it up to do some LiPos but the display now reads LiFe. ??? What happened? Despite the display no longer reading LiPO, is it safe to do those with the LiFe showing?