WhataNut FMA PowerLab8 1000W charger
 

I finally received the WhataNut Charger by FMADirect. It's the PowerLab8 model and it has been out in the field for a bit by Beta Testers.
There is not much to say yet about this charger, as they didn't send the usb adapter with the shipment.
I did get to charge my A123's at 30A! Even cycled them once at a discharge of 30A. It's going through its paces now in my garage. AcePow and Enerland lipos going through a storage charge right now. In unbalance mode, I can charge the A123's at 20A and in balance mode at 30A. However, I cannot do 6s unbalance. But no biggie really. At 30A, the 6s A123 pack is charged in less than 7 minutes. I did some regenerative dircharges. Nice feature to have as the charger doesn't get hot from waisting your mah into heat. My car battery got a nice workout. Next investment is a DC power supply with some big balls. More details will follow later on.
There is a thread about this charger on rcgroups.
http://www.fmadirect.com/images/products/2364.jpg

I bought two, combo #2's, they should be here any day now.
 

I ordered two of these chargers after they sold out the pre-production firts production run of these chargers. I later learned they offered a combo pack that comes with the USB adapter for your computer and a couple different type battery conectors and balance plugs. This is a beast of a charger, and anyone that says they will never fast charge because it takes life from
the batteries, I'll take a ten minute or less 30 amp lipo fast charge at the cost of a little less battery life, even though Thunder Power FAQ's says 6c fast charging reduces battery life zero. These chargers are supose to be able to balance lipo's at up to 1amp, rather than apx 300mah balancing that most balancers balance at. I also like how when your doing a discharge or cycle, to a car battery, the charger puts the juice back into your car battery, that's awesome. I'll be plugging both my power lab 8 chargers into two monster 12volt 64amp 750 watt prototype power suplies I bought from comon sense RC. That's enough power to run each of my chargers at the full 30amp charge for my two, three cell 5200mah Thunder Power Lipo's. Thunder Power already confirmed these batteries will lose zero life, and will take the 30amp fast charge with ease. This should be a ten minute charge time, and my run time is 15 minutes, I always wondered when a charger would be offered with such profound power. I'll plug both these chargers into my Dell computer via USB and run two seperate windows, one for each battery, to monitor every aspect of my charge status and battery condition. I'll be able to keep detailed records of every charge I ever give these batteries. My research into these chargers indicates these are the best of the best, available today. Beta testing has gone on for over one year, and these chargers use the best materials avaiable. I researched online and talked to people for two months before making this purchase. These are great chargers. I will post many detailed pictures of my two powerlab 8 chargers by FMA Direct, CellPro. And of my two 750watt, 64amp, 12volt power supplies, and talk about my experience with these chargers as I experience these chargers. Due to arrive at my doorstep any day now. Have a great day. I hope this information is helpful to you.

I agree that these are the best of the best of chargers currently available. I really don't care for less life of my packs. With this charger you would only need 2 packs to play all day, instead of 4 packs due to the slow charge time. So right there is the savings.

FMA Direct CellPro PowerLab 8, 1000watt 30amp 12 or 24volt Balance Charger.
 

I completely agree with you 100%. the savings is a charge time savings. The worst feeling was sitting there waiting for my batteries to charge. That's why I ran four TC-1030 10amp lipo chargers just to barely keep up with my continuous all day back to back runs. With many batteries now able to safely take a 30amp charge, it's great to have a charger that can actually charge at that high charge rate. I didn't want to settle for a 20amp charger that had to be serviced out of country, ie the Hyperion line of chargers. The PowerLab 8 1000watt 30 amp charger can be serviced right here in US of A, if ever needed. That extra ten amps was well worth the wait time. Plus the fact of over one year of trouble free beta testing is a big plus. As I understand the beta testing process of these chargers, there was a forum open to the public totalk directly with the engineers and beta testers at any point in time. They answered all my questions. I'm totally excited about this charger. I ordered during the second production run which means my powerlab 8 should arrive at my door step the second week of July, that's Today or Tomorrow. My Dual 750 watt 64amp 12volt power supplies are ready for action.

It's true that one 30amp ten minute or less charger/charge time, and two batteries will be all that is needed. I can sell my 20+ lipo's and old five chargers now. This is really great :-)

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...8/DSCF0247.jpg
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...8/DSCF0246.jpg
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...8/DSCF0244.jpg
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...8/DSCF0242.jpg

PowerLab 8 Synchronous Battery WorkStation.
 

What are you doing with the Balancing plug? are you making your own? did you take the small wires out of it's original plug adapter? I've never seen a balancing plug with all the tiny wires pulled out like this, unless you did this yourself? what are you doing with those wires at this point in time? Nice Pictures.

I took the wires out from the balance board. I don't feel like buying just the wiring harness either. So I took them out and soldered on the pins, which I just plug into my balancing ports on my batteries. Easy enough for me and I don't need adapters and whatnot. I'll post pics of my batteries balancing ports later on. I use PC connectors. I also made a power output cable with EC5 connector for when I do parallel packs. I'm just waiting for the usb adapter to play with the custom settings. I just got me an HP server 47A power supply. I just need to figure out the pinout to turn the sucker on.

what does "what a nut" mean?
 

Awesome,
is that a 12volt or a 24volt power supply. I know these chargers can utilize both types. But the 24volt is required if you're goiong to charge say, a 6cell or larger battery at 6c or 30amps. I got lucky, and my 12volt power supply has enough watts to power my charger to charge my 3cell at the full 30amps. if I was charging any more cells, I may have to charge at a lower amperage. some of what I've just said was the most difficult for me to learn and understand, but I understand enough to make it happen now, and that's what counts.

By the way, your subject says Whatanut, before the charger model, and it looks as if that has something to do with the charger model. but I've never heard of whatanut before. can you please tell me what the word "whatanut" is related to?

PS. You must really understand electricity quite well to be able to configure your own balancing plugs. any chance you can document your procedure. in other words, pictures followed by detailed explanations of what each wire does and how it balances your batteries. I know many people understand how to do this, but I come from Nitro background and know very little about electricity. But I want to learn and understand as much as is possible. I hope you will do this. This thread would be a good place to show this process of making your own, or configuring your own balncing port plugs for certain lipo or other types of batteries that anyone may want to balance. I find this to be very important and extreemly valuable information. I hope you can do it :-)

I do something similar, except the end of the balance wires terminate in a pin header (pic and pic). This allows me to use any balance plug with the standard 0.1" spacing. The only exception is some older MA packs I had which use the Hyperion pinout; for these, I just resorted the wires.

hehehe The What-A-nut is just a inside joke that I have at my LHS and Formuladrc forum. Anything that's ultimate is referred to WhatANut!:lol:. Castle also reffered to their stuff related to the sized of "nuts":lol:.

The connectors are just pin headers that BrianG uses, but mine are just indivually cut as I use anything from 2s to 6s. This way I don't need to make a bunch of balancing harnesses. And now I can charge my two 4s packs as 8s with serial adapters. Lots of time saving compared when I use to charge them in parallel at 10A.

The FMA pinouts are the same as a blinky, which I also use at times.

here's the FMA link for the Pin Lead connection diagrams
http://www.fmadirect.com/support_docs/item_1254.pdf

I got the HP server power supply to turn on. This is a mod that every RCM member can do. It's just shorting pin 6, 8 and 10 with eachother. You get get the power supply from fleabay for 15 bucks shipped(cheapest I found) and it's rated for 47A@12.5V. Model number is DPS-600PB, part number is 321632-001. Will post pics of it later.

that is a beast! I just bought the new hyperion duo which can do up to 15A per side at once which is impressive to me. All the charger I need at the moment. Yours is definitely the future of chargers

Here are pics of the server power supply to power the beast. I made an easy connector to "turn on". In an emergency I can just jank on the cord to turn off the PSU.




http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...8/DSCF0254.jpg
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...8/DSCF0252.jpg
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...8/DSCF0250.jpg
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...8/DSCF0249.jpg

Where can you buy this charger?

At FMAdirect.com.