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Is it ok to use Bench Charger for Dakota Lithium Battery?

Thersom1948

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Joined
Apr 16, 2020
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I have a cheap adjustable bench power supply that I bought just to top balance my raw EVE cells
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Now I am about to buy a Dakota 18ah 12v battery for a completely separate project.

Dakota goes on and on about only using a special LiFePo charger for their batteries. My understanding is this is mostly because LiFePo 12v need ~14.4 charging voltage.

If I set the bench charger to constant voltage of 14.4V and just wait for the current to drop to 0A will this work to charge up the Dakota battery?

Will that damage it in some way? It has a built in BMS so I don't see why it would.

Everything I have searched / read here about charging is mostly about permanent installs - with other inputs, loads, maintaining float voltage, etc. This would be purely a stand alone charger.

I'd like to avoid buying another charger if I can use the one I have

Thanks!
 
The power supply will work fine as long as the voltage is manually set correctly. For a permanent install I would prefer something that drops to float or shuts off when charged.

There is no such thing as "lithium" or "metric" electricity. Get the volts and amps correct and all will work great.
 
The power supply will work fine as long as the voltage is manually set correctly. For a permanent install I would prefer something that drops to float or shuts off when charged.

There is no such thing as "lithium" or "metric" electricity. Get the volts and amps correct and all will work great.
That's what I thought, but just wanted to sanity check and not destroy a $180 battery.

Thanks!
 
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