"bulk charge complete"

S

steve marchant

Guest
Acquired a powered wheelchair with charger. The charger seems to signal two
charged conditions: "Bulk charge complete", and "Charge complete". Charging
seems to progress from the former to the latter. What's the significance of
bulk charge?
 
steve marchant <steve.c.marchant@tiscali.co.uk> wrote in message news:485f70ca$1_2@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com...
Acquired a powered wheelchair with charger. The charger seems to signal two
charged conditions: "Bulk charge complete", and "Charge complete". Charging
seems to progress from the former to the latter. What's the significance of
bulk charge?
Sounds like 90 % versus 100% or so......
 
steve marchant wrote:
Acquired a powered wheelchair with charger. The charger seems to signal
two charged conditions: "Bulk charge complete", and "Charge complete".
Charging seems to progress from the former to the latter. What's the
significance of bulk charge?
The "bulk charge" is a high current charge to bring the battery back
from low levels, the the "charge complete" should occur after the
battery has had a higher voltage (than the bulk) applied to finish the
charging and enter "float" or terminate the process. There are many and
varied applications of that process.

Cheers ......... Rheilly P
 
"Rheilly Phoull" <rheilly@bigslong.com> wrote in message
news:4860BCB6.50905@bigslong.com...
steve marchant wrote:
Acquired a powered wheelchair with charger. The charger seems to signal
two charged conditions: "Bulk charge complete", and "Charge complete".
Charging seems to progress from the former to the latter. What's the
significance of bulk charge?

The "bulk charge" is a high current charge to bring the battery back from
low levels, the the "charge complete" should occur after the battery has
had a higher voltage (than the bulk) applied to finish the charging and
enter "float" or terminate the process. There are many and varied
applications of that process.

Cheers ......... Rheilly P
Thanks for that. Seems to me that this complex charging method would
make sense if it incorporated some kind of monitoring of the battery
condition
as it progressed. But I disconnected the charger after the "Bulk charge
complete" indicator showed (after about four hours of charging),
and then re-connected later thinking the cycle would continue from there
to the "Charge complete" condition.
It didn't. It started all over, indicating "Bulk charge...." after another
four hours,
or so, suggesting that the charger was quite dumb and had assumed the
battery was
flat (which it certainly wasn't). Anyway, maybe I'm the dumb one and missing
something.
 
In article <4860e03a$1_4@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com>,
steve.c.marchant@tiscali.co.uk says...
"Rheilly Phoull" <rheilly@bigslong.com> wrote in message
news:4860BCB6.50905@bigslong.com...
steve marchant wrote:
Acquired a powered wheelchair with charger. The charger seems to signal
two charged conditions: "Bulk charge complete", and "Charge complete".
Charging seems to progress from the former to the latter. What's the
significance of bulk charge?

The "bulk charge" is a high current charge to bring the battery back from
low levels, the the "charge complete" should occur after the battery has
had a higher voltage (than the bulk) applied to finish the charging and
enter "float" or terminate the process. There are many and varied
applications of that process.

Cheers ......... Rheilly P
Thanks for that. Seems to me that this complex charging method would
make sense if it incorporated some kind of monitoring of the battery
condition
as it progressed. But I disconnected the charger after the "Bulk charge
complete" indicator showed (after about four hours of charging),
and then re-connected later thinking the cycle would continue from there
to the "Charge complete" condition.
It didn't. It started all over, indicating "Bulk charge...." after another
four hours,
or so, suggesting that the charger was quite dumb and had assumed the
battery was
flat (which it certainly wasn't). Anyway, maybe I'm the dumb one and missing
something.
Do a search on 3 stage or 4 stage chargers.

In summary:

Bulk charge is typically a high constant current charge until the
battery reaches the cyclic voltage.
Absorption charge is holding the voltage at the cyclic voltage until the
current falls to a low level.
Finally the voltage is dropped back to the float voltage where it can be
held indefinately.

Putting battery back onto a charger if it is not fully charged usually
will start a bulk charge cycle until the cycliv voltage once again is
reached.
 
"Ray" <zathrasAT@netspaceDOTnet.au> wrote in message
news:MPG.22cc0c06b2434ba9989738@news.netspace.net.au...
In article <4860e03a$1_4@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com>,
steve.c.marchant@tiscali.co.uk says...

"Rheilly Phoull" <rheilly@bigslong.com> wrote in message
news:4860BCB6.50905@bigslong.com...
steve marchant wrote:
Acquired a powered wheelchair with charger. The charger seems to
signal
two charged conditions: "Bulk charge complete", and "Charge complete".
Charging seems to progress from the former to the latter. What's the
significance of bulk charge?

The "bulk charge" is a high current charge to bring the battery back
from
low levels, the the "charge complete" should occur after the battery
has
had a higher voltage (than the bulk) applied to finish the charging and
enter "float" or terminate the process. There are many and varied
applications of that process.

Cheers ......... Rheilly P
Thanks for that. Seems to me that this complex charging method would
make sense if it incorporated some kind of monitoring of the battery
condition
as it progressed. But I disconnected the charger after the "Bulk charge
complete" indicator showed (after about four hours of charging),
and then re-connected later thinking the cycle would continue from there
to the "Charge complete" condition.
It didn't. It started all over, indicating "Bulk charge...." after
another
four hours,
or so, suggesting that the charger was quite dumb and had assumed the
battery was
flat (which it certainly wasn't). Anyway, maybe I'm the dumb one and
missing
something.



Do a search on 3 stage or 4 stage chargers.

In summary:

Bulk charge is typically a high constant current charge until the
battery reaches the cyclic voltage.
Absorption charge is holding the voltage at the cyclic voltage until the
current falls to a low level.
Finally the voltage is dropped back to the float voltage where it can be
held indefinately.

Putting battery back onto a charger if it is not fully charged usually
will start a bulk charge cycle until the cycliv voltage once again is
reached.
OK. Understood. Thanks
 

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