"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 5 Oct 2017 15:40:18 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

...
I finally picked up a 0-30v/5a Chi lab supply a few years ago. Love
the current limiting. I haven't yet used it to charge a battery,
though.

A lab supply can bring back a power tool Nicad pack that has
discharged too far for its charger to accept, or a Lithium that has
self-discharged below the disconnect voltage. My stock of tabbed
18650s came from cell phone chargers that had done that in storage and
appeared to be dead.

Unless the power supply is specifically rated to charge batteries I'd
put a diode in series to block battery voltage from damaging the
output if it's shut off while connected.
http://www.mastechpowersupply.com/
"In the last three years, we have significantly improved reliabilty
and fault tolerance by adding over-voltage and reverse-voltage
protection to most of the updated models under the new brand of
Volteq."

I bought this to show the battery voltage after the diode drop.
https://www.amazon.com/DROK-Voltmete...ct_top?ie=UTF8

It can be powered by the battery it's measuring, or from a surplus
cell phone charger and used as a bench voltmeter.

Yes, smart chargers aren't.

They have brains but not eyes.

The spec sheets and application notes for battery controller ICs
explain the problems they try to address.
http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/power-mana...-overview.page
I was mainly concerned with the automatic management of industrial
Lithium batteries.

Yes, the BMS seems to be much better at 'smarts' for lithiums.
Evidently, though, BMSes aren't all they're said to be.
https://www.fullspectrumpower.com/bl...ithium-battery

That's a marketing and accounting issue, the engineering is cheap and
simple.

-jsw