The Universal Charger usage is very easy but some point must be strictly followed in order to avoid any problem in battery and charger management. First read the charger documentation, then follow these recommendations in order to have a good charger usage.




The charger is a mesurement instrument because has to measure very accurately the voltages and current flows. For this the first step is to calibrate the charger using the "Volt Calibration" and "Ampere Calibration" on the charger. Follow the instructions on this website and on the user manual to perform a good calibration. The calibration process, if the resistors are very different from the default on (R6=12K and R5=47K) can be a bit long process. Take advantage from the key autorepeat during this adjustment or adjust the resistor value using the PC software.




After the calibration the user can customize all the battery profiles in order to prepare the charge and discharge of the different cell packs. The customization can be performed on three types of parameters:

• Battery main parameters (editables from the charger or from the PC software)
• Battery advanced parameters (editables only from the PC software)
• Charger parameters (editables only from the PC software)

The change of battery advanced parameters or charger parameters must be performed only by expert users. Take expremely care to modify these parameters because the wrong setting can bring to the charger or battery damage.
The user can (backup or restore) the charger complete parameters set (better if after the calibration) with the relevant PC software.

See the "General manager" web site page to a complete reference for the parameters that can be changed.




After the calibration and the customization the user can safely charge a battery pack. Be sure that the selected profile in terms of chemistry, capacity and number of cells matches the battery pack to be charged.
The charge process is performed using a constant current for NiCd and NiMh. For this charge the charger looks at the pack voltage and stores the maximum peak reached: when the cells "comes back" from this peak a certain amount of voltage (delta peak) the charger stops the process because the cells are full. The delta peak used for these cells is the following:

• NiCd -> 10mV/cell
• NiMh -> 5mV/cell

The charge process for LiPo and SLA is performed using a constant current until the reaching of the Maximum Voltage, then with a constant Voltage decreasing the current. The charge will finish when the current is under the 5% of the initial current. The maximum voltage for these cells is the following:

• LiPo -> 4200mV/cell
• SLA -> 2500mV/cell

All these parameters can be changed using the PC software. The charge current is expressed in terms of cells capacity: 1.0 in the charge parameters means that the cells will be charged at the mA corresponding to the capacity. For a cell of 2000mAh, in the above case, the charge current will be 2 Ampere.
During the charge process the user can display the voltage, current and capacity curves (see figure) using the delivered software tool.




After the calibration and the customization the user can safely discharge a battery pack. Be sure that the selected profile in terms of chemistry, capacity and number of cells matches the battery pack to be charged.
The discharge process for all battery types is performed using a constant current until the reaching of the Cutoff Voltage, then the discharge will finish. The cutoff voltage for these cells is the following:

• NiCd -> 800mV/cell
• NiMh -> 1000mV/cell
• LiPo -> 3000mV/cell
• SLA -> 2000mV/cell

All these parameters can be changed using the PC software. The discharge current is expressed in terms of cells capacity: 5.0 in the charge parameters means that the cells will be discharged at five times the mA corresponding to the capacity. For a cell of 2000mAh, in the above case, the discharge current will be 10 Ampere.
During the charge process the user can display the voltage, current and capacity curves (see figure) using the delivered software tool.