iCharger 1010b+ shutting off suddenly at ~2.5a..

[neptronix]

Allright, so it happened again and i got pissed.
After many months of this not occurring, bam. i get a shutoff at 2.8 amps, and had to reduce it to 1 amp.
Not acceptable.
The worst part is that it hasn't been telling me it's overheating or reducing the current like it says it will in the manual, so it is shutting down some other way.

Apparently i have been resting the hottest part of my iCharger on top of the hottest part of my radioshack PSU.



I was not aware of this until i opened my power supply and iCharger up.



Now look at this crap. The fan seems to only blow air off of the resistors for the balancing section. It really contributes minimally to actually cooling the fets, which are obviously encased below the board, not allowing heat to naturally rise upwards.




FETs are pressure mounted ( badly ) just like the iCharger 3010b+. But there seems to be a good amount of variance in how badly they are mounted.
I cannot tell how bad they are mounted due to the fact that the circuit board is glued somehow to the aluminum. I only see one FET not looking so good, the others look okay. No idea how many there are though.

Now i understand why i get a funny smell charging above 150 watts. I've had to stay below about 3.1 amps to avoid the funny smell. It is probably the little heat pad burning, because this unit is overheating and not telling me.

Now there's also a problem with the heat sensor - it's on the power input side and not the other side. If your FETs are overheating on the other side, it may not detect that and trip the alarm. I think that is what's happening here.

This is terrible thermal design. The heat is in the worst place, and doesn't really even transfer to the top part of the case.
I guess i will keep this unit elevated now, with some rubber feet or something.. And i am going to find a massive industrial power supply / audio amplifier heatsink for it. I want to get closer to the full 5-7 amps at 10S that this unit promises on the box. Now that i have a 20AH pack, this is pretty imperative.

I still love this charger but it seems to be engineered for repeat business . This explains why some people have their higher power units violently explode and some people have flawless operation forever.. keeping the unit elevated and luck of the draw with the pressure mounted FETs is paramount to a long life with these.

[Spacey]

I have the same charger, will keep an eye on it. What I do though is place the charger on top of a power supply that is large and turned off to use it as a heat sink for the charger.

[neptronix]

That's a smart idea. However, i've found that even on a source that is not generating heat, the iCharger is best kept off a surface.

I bought some rubber feet to get it about 1/3rd an inch ( maybe 4mm? ) off the ground. I can run it up to 4.7amps now. But it gradually climbs up to about 7 degrees within the cutoff temperature. So it needs some additional help

When charging 10s, that's only 195 watts out of the total 300w the unit is rated to handle.

Theoretically, it could be good all the way up to 7 amps.
I think with about 10mm legs and some additional heatsinking / fans it could do 5.5 - 6 amps.

[Spacey]

5 amps is the max I get out of mine also when charging 8 cells.

[neptronix]

Really? on a 1010? that's no good. You should be able to do at least 7 amps.

I found out the other day that if you hit the left arrow while it is charging, you can cycle through some good info.. temp.. amp draw and power supply voltage.. etc. Good for diagnosing stuff like this.

100F is where the unit automatically turns off. So that's a good number to watch.
If the unit is pretty hot to the touch on the bottom, then it's burning up inside.

Bought these today for the iCharger. But since i can get the iCharger up to about 4.5a no prob now, i think i will reserve them for the meanwell that's on it's way