PL8 Availability & other questions

[Eli81]

Hello,

I'm going to be purchasing several of your products soon. I noticed that the availability date has changed once, so I wanted to inquire as to how solid the July 27th date is?

My other question is regarding the 20A NiMH charging limit. Is there a reason for this limit?

Can NiMH chemistry be discharged at 40A through the regenerative discharge function? Or more?

Thanks for your time.

[Tim Marks]

Originally Posted by Eli81

Hello,

I'm going to be purchasing several of your products soon. I noticed that the availability date has changed once, so I wanted to inquire as to how solid the July 27th date is?

My other question is regarding the 20A NiMH charging limit. Is there a reason for this limit?

Can NiMH chemistry be discharged at 40A through the regenerative discharge function? Or more?

Thanks for your time.

Hi:

We received notification this AM that the sea shipment arrived at port on July 19th. Assuming we don't have the big customs delay for inspection, July 27 should be a firm date.

Regarding the 20A limit on Ni chemistry. We limited this for reasons of safety; so that customers would not charge Ni chemistry too fast. When Ni see over-current, they vent and explode. It's not a good situation. We couldn't imagine a situation where 20A would not be high enough rate for any Ni capacity. Do you have a situation where this limit is troublesome, or are you just curious?

Regarding regen discharge on Ni, yes, I believe you can acheive full current of 40A up to the max watts of the device.

Tim Marks

[Eli81]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Ah, the joys of sea shipment.

I'm going to be using your product to help quality control extremely high C-rate NiMH cells as they're imported for use in my product. They are 8Ah cells rated at 18.75C maximum discharge current(150A) and 7.5C charge current(60A).

They are built into packs of 6 cells each, so 7.2V nominal. I would very much like to be able to test these packs at 30-40A of charge and 40-60A of discharge, which on the surface should be entirely possible since this will not even break the 500W mark at ~7.2V?

Your product is very attractive to me due to the volume of cells I'll be testing. The regenerative discharge function should help save a lot of money on my electric bill, and it fits the "green" nature of what I do.

I imagine that lifting this limit would just be a matter of changing a variable in the firmware. How open to this are you? I would be happy to sign a non-distribution agreement or anything else you needed in order to make this happen.

Thanks again for your time,
-Eli

[Tim Marks]

Originally Posted by Eli81

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Ah, the joys of sea shipment.

I'm going to be using your product to help quality control extremely high C-rate NiMH cells as they're imported for use in my product. They are 8Ah cells rated at 18.75C maximum discharge current(150A) and 7.5C charge current(60A).

They are built into packs of 6 cells each, so 7.2V nominal. I would very much like to be able to test these packs at 30-40A of charge and 40-60A of discharge, which on the surface should be entirely possible since this will not even break the 500W mark at ~7.2V?

Your product is very attractive to me due to the volume of cells I'll be testing. The regenerative discharge function should help save a lot of money on my electric bill, and it fits the "green" nature of what I do.

I imagine that lifting this limit would just be a matter of changing a variable in the firmware. How open to this are you? I would be happy to sign a non-distribution agreement or anything else you needed in order to make this happen.

Thanks again for your time,
-Eli

Hi:

I'll have to check into that for you. In the mean time, can you please drop me a request via normal email at tim@fmadirect.com ? Forums are not a good place to discuss this.

Tim Marks