On Thu, 14 Apr 2016 13:50:58 +0100, pamela wrote:

snip

There's also a lot of discussion forums. I can understand people
wanting to discuss charging secondary cells but I never knew
people would discuss a particular charger (La Crosse, Maha,
whatever) in such detail.

Hey, we (humans) can pretty well discuss anything to any level, if it
interests us enough. ;-)

By buying the charger I feel I've
nearly joined an enthusiast community!

Welcome.

I have a question for you, if you don't mind.

Of course not.

For the sake of argument, let's say a AA cell is rated at 2,000
mAh and is used regularly.

Ok.

Also let's say the "Test" feature on
my BC-700 lookalike shows it holds 1,850 mAh.

Ok.

What amount of capacity increase might you get by using "Refresh"?

Assuming it's a NiMh and given that you already stated that the cell
is 'used regularly' then you are likely to see little to no increase
in capacity, *depending* on how you normally charge the cell.

I'm asking because I don't want to run the charger for several
days, only to get a measly 80 mAh increase.

No, and I wouldn't suggest you do in that case as I wouldn't say
that's what that charger is meant to do (or any, under the said
circumstances).

If however you had a quantity of mixed (age, make, capacity, charge /
usage status) cells and you wanted to 'sort them out' (into good /
bad, equal capacity etc) then that's when the likes of the BC-700
would come into it's own.

I'd grab four of the same (make, chemistry, capacity), bung them in
the BC-700 and put them on 'Refresh' and see what comes out. Any
around the marked capacity I would keep, any well below I'd either
refresh again or recycle (battery recycling box at Sainsbury's) and
I'd mark the tested capacity on the cell itself (with a Sharpie) so I
could then use them in matched groups (making them last longer and run
better).

My new charger arrived this morning and I was just playing with it
cycling a 3000mA NiMh model RC car pack.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...9/1010B%2B.jpg

A cool feature is that when you are on the discharge cycle it can dump
the discharging current back into the source / supply battery (I'm
currently running it from a smallish 12V lead acid / gel battery).

I bought it primarily to check / balance a(n expensive) 10A x 10 cell
Li-Ion pack but knowing it could do so much more. ;-)

Cheers, T i m