General Battery Chargers
Introduction
Battery chargers have become more and more sophisticated and capable
Battery chargers can be of the early and cheap variety, plain vanilla 4, 6 or 8 Amp with basic voltage smoothing but poor current control. These can do the job if monitored well and the battery is in good condition.
Modern (and more expensive) models are now capable of charging 'difficult' batteries without damage while giving a degree of condition feedback. Some will not only continue to safely trickle charge a battery but even have a plate cleaning mode.
Price therefore varies a lot - generally you get what you pay for.
Pictures of chargers
Decades old but still working a very basic 4A charger. This sort of vurrent source could be used for plating metal or de-rusting metal (whereas a modern multi-stage charger would'nt work in those situations)
Not the latest model, but pretty functional and safe, this Sparkrite charges in stages and gives reasonable feedback as to whether the battery can accept a complete charge.
Charging batteries - Facts
Basic voltages to look for (a 12V battery will usually show 13.4V wehn fully charged)
CTEK E-Learning battery charging tutorial
Links
A very well respectyed range of sophsiticated chargers is produced by Swedish firm CTEK. Typically one to suit a high capacity truck battery would be about £40 ~ £100
