Zanflare charger

I have tried and compared this with the Opus for a few tests.

One BIGthing to keep in mind is that the Zanflare's discharge rate is capped at 500mA since it doesn't have any active cooling. That's an important practical difference as it doubles your test time, assuming you'd use the Opus at 1,000mA discharge.

The Zanflare is also a pain in the rear to get cells into (because it's upside down) and out of (because there's almost no spacing between the cells).

As for discharge test characteristics, from my limited tests, here are my personal observations:

  • For actual results, the Opus reads the closest to cell spec sheet when discharging at 500mA. It reads slightly high (maybe 3%) when discharging at 1,000mA. The Zanflare is evenhigher, like 5-6% high, even though thedischarging is cappedat 500mA
  • For a given slot (a single battery in a single slot, across multiple tests), my tests are showing a sway of +/- 25mA for the Opus***, and +/- 10mA for the Zanflare.
  • For a given test (four comparable batteries all tested at the same time), the Opus is around +/- 15mA for me, but the zanflare is all the way up to +/- 50mA (note that these figures include the actual cell differences, so the +/-15mA from the Opus is probably almost entirely cell differences, so it's the zanflare here that's too sloppy, with Opus dead on the money)
The zanflare has a much "smarter" charge system that uses its power more wisely and provides more even charge to the cells. This is evidenced by the fact it actually has a 1.5A power supply compared to 3A on Opus, and yet still manages to charge all 4 cells at 1A just fine.

My $0.02: if the 500mA constraint and the usability don't bother you, the zanflarea perfectly fine tester with very high precision, but I would recommend doing some "calibration" with known batteries to establish offsets per slot, like "this slot measures 3% high, this one 8%" so you get more accuracy.

*** -I'm still trying to work out why the Opus has a drift between one test to the next. It's very odd, and I'm trying to do some factor elimination at the moment. I'll post findings when I have it. If I find out the cause of the drift, the +/-25mA can drop to probably +/- 5mA, making it both very precise and accurate.

image_eqjunv.jpg
image_ofinlg.jpg
 
Thanks Travis said:
I have tried and compared this with the Opus for a few tests.

One BIGthing to keep in mind is that the Zanflare's discharge rate is capped at 500mA since it doesn't have any active cooling. That's an important practical difference as it doubles your test time, assuming you'd use the Opus at 1,000mA discharge.

The Zanflare is also a pain in the rear to get cells into (because it's upside down) and out of (because there's almost no spacing between the cells).

As for discharge test characteristics, from my limited tests, here are my personal observations:

  • For actual results, the Opus reads the closest to cell spec sheet when discharging at 500mA. It reads slightly high (maybe 3%) when discharging at 1,000mA. The Zanflare is evenhigher, like 5-6% high, even though thedischarging is cappedat 500mA
  • For a given slot (a single battery in a single slot, across multiple tests), my tests are showing a sway of +/- 25mA for the Opus***, and +/- 10mA for the Zanflare.
  • For a given test (four comparable batteries all tested at the same time), the Opus is around +/- 15mA for me, but the zanflare is all the way up to +/- 50mA (note that these figures include the actual cell differences, so the +/-15mA from the Opus is probably almost entirely cell differences, so it's the zanflare here that's too sloppy, with Opus dead on the money)
The zanflare has a much "smarter" charge system that uses its power more wisely and provides more even charge to the cells. This is evidenced by the fact it actually has a 1.5A power supply compared to 3A on Opus, and yet still manages to charge all 4 cells at 1A just fine.

My $0.02: if the 500mA constraint and the usability don't bother you, the zanflarea perfectly fine tester with very high precision, but I would recommend doing some "calibration" with known batteries to establish offsets per slot, like "this slot measures 3% high, this one 8%" so you get more accuracy.

*** -I'm still trying to work out why the Opus has a drift between one test to the next. It's very odd, and I'm trying to do some factor elimination at the moment. I'll post findings when I have it. If I find out the cause of the drift, the +/-25mA can drop to probably +/- 5mA, making it both very precise and accurate.

image_eqjunv.jpg
image_ofinlg.jpg
Click to expand...
 
I also have the Zanflare C4, Opus BTC3100 and MiBoxer C2 4000. The MiBoxer I am using as my gold standard, and have modified with a logger also for "external verification", and can attest that it seems to be pretty close to the logger values. My Zanflare reads 4.9% high with a standard deviation of 2.3% over 20 samples compared to the MiBoxer, and my Opus reads 4.1% high with a standard deviation of 1.6% over 58 samples. I agree with all the other criticisms of the Zanflare that Travis noted, though passive cooling can be a benefit; the MiBoxer is very noisy, and so is the Opus since I had to replace the original fan which died only a week after getting it.
 
rev0 said:
I also have the Zanflare C4, Opus BTC3100 and MiBoxer C2 4000. The MiBoxer I am using as my gold standard, and have modified with a logger also for "external verification", and can attest that it seems to be pretty close to the logger values. My Zanflare reads 4.9% high with a standard deviation of 2.3% over 20 samples compared to the MiBoxer, and my Opus reads 4.1% high with a standard deviation of 1.6% over 58 samples. I agree with all the other criticisms of the Zanflare that Travis noted, though passive cooling can be a benefit; the MiBoxer is very noisy, and so is the Opus since I had to replace the original fan which died only a week after getting it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the extra data points! Seems like you're mostly in line with what I'm seeing (although I don't have a gold standard :-X). What discharging current are you using on the Opus when you determined the 4.1%?

I have one more chart to link:


image_xyqiqg.jpg


This one is veryinteresting to me. This is 5 tests of the same cells in the Opus. For each test, I averaged the mAH of the cells, and computed the delta that I've plotted here.

This is why I posted my *** footnote in my first reply. There's some test-to-test variance that, if I could figure out the source, would give the Opus extremelyprecise and repeatable results. As of now, the only way I can think of to achieve this level of +/-2.5mAh reproducability is to dedicate one of your slots to a known calibration cell so you can factor out the per-test variance.
 
I was using 1.5A on the MiBoxer (though the way it works is it drops to 0.7A below 3.3V and 0.4A below 3.0V until 2.8V termination), 1A on the Opus (2.95V termination it looks like), and 0.5A on the Zanflare (2.75V termination voltage I believe). Termination voltage might account for a small amount of the variation. The Opus gives inaccurate results if it needs to "pause" from overheating, so with an upgraded fan or fan blowing over the cells, the results should be more repeatable.
 
Thanks Rev0 ...I wonder if the C4-12 slot version of the Miboxer would perform as well as the 2 slot. Great feedback guys.
 
I got excited there for a minute, but it turns out the C4-12 doesn't do discharge testing. Seems only the C2-4000 has that ability. I'm thinking of getting another one just to speed up testing even though technically per cell the Opus is faster. I just can't trust the Opus to the same level of accuracy, plus I want to be able to do 1.5A discharge.
 
Headrc said:
Thanks Rev0 ...I wondered if the C4-12 slot version of the Miboxer would perform as well as the 2 slot ...but then I looked at the manuals and it seems the C4's don't have the functionality of the C2's. Great feedback guys.
Click to expand...
 
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