Charge 18650 with Poly charge 4?

ejscfp1

Newly Enlightened
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Jun 1, 2018
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Hello, can you please let me know if is OK to charge 18650 batteries with a Poly charge 4 that says charge lithium polymer batteries ?
Thanks in advance
EJSCFP
 

Gauss163

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Oct 20, 2013
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Location
USA
Technically, the answer is yes, but practically the answer is: for your safety you should find something newer. This is a very old-school RC/hobby charger that is expecting 1-4S lipo packs, and autosenses the number of cells, and sets the current based on the setting you provide for nominal capacity. It should work fine for a single cell (1S) but if something goes wrong it is possible that it may charge 1S as 2S or higher, yielding a serious overvoltage (this actually happened on another model like this and led to serious fires - but usually with 2S or 3S packs).

Note: it says not to use it on Li-ion because in those ancient times Li-ion cells were charged to 4.1V and only Lipo was charged to 4.2V. Li-ion has come a long way since then, as have Li-ion chargers (RC/hobby or not)
 
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