If anyone has the Bosch Lithium 10.8v charger BC 430 could you check the charging voltage and/or the charged battery voltage,exactly,.... It was made for the 10.8v line but they claim now its ok for the newer 12v line.. They also claim the 12v line is different and more powerful. It says 10.8v output on the charger so how could it charge 12v....? Its for the small lithium screw/driver and the impact driver. This info would be helpful to many people,thanks..

 

Rechargeable Li cells charge to 4.20V each, so the choices are 4.20, 8.40, 12.60V. I'm not sure how they could get 10.8V with Li cells. You should be able to measure the set voltage with the battery disconnected at the battery connection points.

 

The cell voltage is normally given as 3.6V or 3.7V, the 'in use' voltage rather than the max charge voltage.

3 x 3.6 = 10.8V, 4 x 3.6 would be 14.4 so no 12V step.

As Bountyhunter says, the charger would have to be rather higher to work, the older 10.8V charger is mis-labelled and will be somewhat over 12V.

Their marketing department probably decided 12V sells better than 10.8V as well..


In general, anything with interchangeable large lithium cell batteries will have the charge controller in the battery pack, the external 'charger' is just a DC supply and not critical.

Lithium cells are very critical on charge conditions and using a built-in controller allows the state of each battery pack to be fully monitored to prevent dangerous charge states or damage to the cells.

Many types use a standardised communication link from the battery controller to the equipment to both give state of charge and disable it when the battery gets low to prevent over-discharge.

SBS Info:
http://sbs-forum.org/

 

good info..
so do you think its max charging to 12+ v and they are indeed just changing the name on it..?? They claim it has more power now at 12V. Is that bunk..? or do you think they might have made a change to the controller in the pack so it takes more amps..??
I dont have a meter right now..