Battery Chargers

If you have a device that can be charged on a car battery through the ciggy
lighter, would it be OK to attach it directly to a car battery charger?

 

It depends... battery chargers don't [usually] have much filtering,
and can have significant variation in voltage without a battery
connected. If the device sucks up a significant amount of current,
the voltage fluctuations will be less.

What sort of device are you talking about?

 

A 7.2 volt battery pack for my aeroplane, I fucked up the mains charger and
my ciggy lighter in the car is only live when the ignitions on.

I was thiunking of just connectin it direct to my car charger.

 

Personally, I'd hook a FOAD capacitor across the charger leads and run
with it. You could also rewire the cigarette lighter so it would be
always on.

Along similar lines, I've used PC power supplies as an alternative
to medium power battery eliminators. I've got a little Peltier effect
'fridge' that came with an extremely noisy (electrically, as in it totally
screws up the telly) switching power supply. Replaced it with a PSU out
of an old PC, totally quiet. No worries about output ripple on a PC PSU!

 

Gavsta wrote

Probably, it rather depends on the device.

 

Gavsta wrote

Nicads? Lead acid? Lion?

 

.... and the charger.

 

Prolly not.
ITYWF that the current drawn by the battyer charger (1) exceeds that of the
battery charger (2)'s output. ;-/

Also, there may well be current/voltage limiters in (1) that may not work
correctly with a charger (2) being of higher voltage when not connected to a
hefty battery to smooth it's output.

(1) nicad {aeroplane}
(2) wet cell {car chjarger}

Make sense? doubt it, to maby broadsides this afternoon. ;o)

 

... and what kind of day the electrons have had.

 

If you are only charging one set of 7.2 cells, put a pair of crocodile
clips on the charger lead instead of the ciggy lighter connector &
connect directly to your car battery.

If you are going to be charging several sets, then get a leisure
(caravan type) battery. When I used to race 1:10th off-road buggies we
mainly used 100 - 150 ah batteries for this (charging 2 sets of cells at
once at around 5amps).

Not a cheap hobby.

 

I got a cheap car battery from my local car parts shop, I use that for
rapid charging.