Airstream charger noisy

[jt073]

I have just used for the first time my new SCA 8 Airstream battery charger and boy is it noisy!

I am unsure what are the performance benefits of this charger over my other (TCL 6) charger - I know the fan is designed to cool the battery thereby enabling quicker charging, but I don’t know whether in practice this makes a great deal of difference - maybe in a production environment where time is money and you are working the batteries flat out, the Airstream model is worthwhile, but I am unconvinced.

I have long had a (36v) Bosch charger with fan and that is very discreet in comparison to the Festool Airstream.

Should I return this and exchange for a non fan-assisted model?

Cheers

 

[AlexThePalex]

Like you said, might be usefull in production environment, though I doubt it is that critical.

I myself will never need my batteries to charge that fast, so I'd really like to do without the fan.

Sometimes I'm painting on a job and a carpenter buddy and a plumber buddy of mine both have their makita chargers running with the fans, and it is totally irritating. Batteries are charged in 20 minutes but they change them 4 or 5 hours later. 

 

[Bob D.]

I thought the airstream charger flowed air through the battery thereby cooling the battery. I thought that was to maintain the battery within the proper charging temperature, or get it there before charging. If you work your battery hard, heavy discharge rate, it will get warm, maybe even hot.  Any battery can get hot but few chargers will cool a battery like the airstream can.

My EGO electric mower uses a 7.5AH 56V battery, it weighs about 8 pounds and its physical size is about the same as 6 Festool 18V batteries. I can cut my whole lawn (19K sf) with one fully charged battery. The charger which came with the mower will do a full recharge from zero in 1 hour. It cools the battery the same way the Festool Airstream charger does. At least its my assumption that is how the Airstream charger works. At times the fan is noisy, but once the battery and has cooled down and the charger itself is not hot the fan slows to a whisper.

 

[usernumber1]

heat is really bad for batteries especially when charging. i'd be more concerned with the chargers that don't have fans, even though they are more commonly found

here's some light readinghttps://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_at_high_and_low_temperatures

my airstream is not very noisy, you can hear the fan but it's nothing really loud.