we use Ansmann extensively for our products at work.
One of the negatives of retirement is you lose all connections with current practices. Still, it sounds like I am in good company.
I would want to check, but my recollection is that NiMH chargers will detect the battery voltage and simply float continuously once they’re fully charged. They don’t shut down per se, but the current will be tiny.
I have checked the instruction book for the ACS48, from which I quote:
"The charger continues to charge the battery
pack while connected. Therefore, determine
the charging time based on the table (see
picture 2). Disconnect the battery pack
after the calculated time in order to prevent
overcharging".
This is a menace when the battery manufacturer's claimed capacity is greater than the true capacity.
I have given my battery pack a fresh dose of 116 mA for another 100 minutes, with no sign of the current falling away and no signs of overheating either. So the pack has now had 3 hr 30 min of charge.
3.5 (hours) x 116 mA = 406 mAh, which is near enough the capacity printed on the batteries and rather more than my estimates. Yet I still don't have a clue whether the pack is fully charged.
Something else I don't know is, does the charging process waste power? I mean, if a battery had a true capacity of 300 mAh, and I charged it for three hours at 100mA, would it end up fully charged? Or maybe I have to add some extra energy (extra time) to compensate for losses.
