Does anyone know if Braun battery toothbrush chargers are compatible between different models?
I have a spare 4729 charger and a chap has left his charger for his
3756 brush in Spain. I'm thinking if it sits on the spigot it will charge but...AJH
In article , snipped-for-privacy@sylva.icuklive.co.uk writes
I'd certainly give it a go, particularly with same make and spigot fit.
I've had the charger fail on one make that I had loads of spare brushes for with no possibility of a repair so I went to Argos and got their cheapest rechargeable and now use the guts from that to charge the other make. 12mths later and no problems.
I've had that work just fine. Doesn't guarantee anything of course.
NT
IME yes if it's the little base, 7mm vertical plastic peg, induction charge.
This is yet another occasion when one of the better plug in energy monitors can prove its worth.
You can at least check whether the charger base is in danger of overload plus, for future reference, take note of the readings with the toothbrush on and off the charger base. Better still if you'd recorded such info with the original charger to compare against the use of any subsequent replacement.
IME if it fits it will work.
I would be astounded if Braun didn't change the shape of the spigot every time they made an incompatible change to the charger.
I would be a little less confident that a Poundland charger that fitted a Braun toothbrush was safe.
IME they don't - over 10 years it's been the same.
Well, it's an induction charger, so few assumptions can be made about the coupling between charger and device. They would have to make the charging circuit pretty unfussy IMO.
Our current one (a few years old) is different than the one we had previously. Our current one has a sort of oval ring which the toothbrush sits on/in. The old one had a spigot IIRC
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Not seen that type...
Can one of those monitors really measure such a tiny difference? It takes about 12 hours to charge a toothbrush up - the power transferred must be about a quarter of a Watt.
Similarly, it seems unlikely that they can transfer enough power to do any damage.
-- Richard
It all depends on the charging circuit used in the toothbrush itself. This can range from a simple full wave rectifier connected directly between the 'receiver' coil and the battery (most likely a bi-phase connection to a pair of diodes rather than a fullwave bridge) or incorporate its own switching charge controller circuitry using a higher voltage receiver coil - more likely when using Lithium based cell technology rather than one or two NiMH cells in the simpler coil/rectifier circuit.
If your assumption, based on the WH capacity of the toothbrush battery and the time required to reach full charge is a valid one, you need to factor in the losses in the toothbrush's charging circuit which might well be another quarter of a watt, taking the demand on the charger base unit to half a watt before factoring in the losses within the base unit itself. Your quarter watt demand by the battery might well show itself as a 1 watt load on the base unit consumption (indeed, it might well be a watt or two higher than this - I've never tested any of these toothbrush chargers myself).
Unless you've bought a realy crappy plug in energy monitor, you should be able to get readings to a tenth of watt (at least in the range 1 to 99 watts - some, despite tenth of a watt resolution won't show fractional power below a 1 watt minimum (The Kill-A-Watt and its European derivatives show this behaviour).
Well, any modern plug in energy monitor such as the £9.99 one in Maplin's catalogue, should allow you to verify this assumption quite easily.
Actually I see that my Braun says it takes 24 hours for a complete charge, so the power is even less.
Perhaps, but the idea was to compare it with two different toothbrushes, so any difference is going to be a lot less than that.
-- Richard
Not on a shaver socket! (Without some adapters, anyway.)
CPC are offering one with the following spec:
Measuring range voltage: 190 - 276 V AC Measuring accuracy voltage: +/-1% Measured range current: 0.01 - 13 A Measuring accuracy current: +/-1% or +/-0.01 A Measuring range power: 0.2 - 3120 W Measuring accuracy power: +/-1% or +/-0.2 W
For £14 inc. VAT. Part No. PL14303.
I strongly suspect that means the accuracy is 0.2W for readings of less than 200W and 1% above that. Given we are probably discussing powers in the sub-watt range, an accuracy of 0.2W is not very useful - particularly as the accuracy is quite likely to be different for toothbrushes with different power-factors
It's the only one that CPC is offering!
Worth taking a look at Maplin's offerings. Here's a quote from an earlier thread in this NG, [OT} Electricity usage, that I contributed to about 3 weeks ago:
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"Maplin sell that model (L61AQ) for a quid more. However, they're still selling the equally as good N67FU monitor for £9.99
A quick look at CPC reveals the energenie (PL13062) for £10.05 +VAT (£12.06), unfortunately as per usual, no great detail on its specifications.
As it happens, I own an L61AQ (Europeanised Kill-A-Watt) along with a couple of the N67FU meters which all, according to my trusty Metrawatt analogue watt meter, are pretty accurately calibrated for most loads in the 1 to 3750 and 3120W upper limit ranges considering the limitations of digital metering.
I've just noticed that Maplin still erroneously list the power consumption of the L61AQ as 20W (10W for the yank version) rather than the more correct figure of 20VA on the Amazon site (the actual consumption being in the region of half a watt for both types)."
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