Braun toothbrush chargers

A partial answer: they are certainly not all compatible as our newest brushes wouldn't even fit on an old charger base. And cutting the plastic on the charger to try to make it fit proved unsuccessful - albeit that could be my incompetence.

It sounds as if it won't matter to you but the more recent chargers are also single voltage unlike the older ones which coped with 110V-240V.

They don't supply a voltage - they supply an AC magentic field though a peg.

IME if it fits the base, it charges, and if it doesn't, well it doesn't.

I have certainly had a could of models over a period of a few years that share the same base, and as another poster says, some new models appear to be differing.

I would not worry beyond that - induction charging is so crude that teh toothbrush will have electronics in it to ensure it will not over charge and you'd be hard pressed with an air gapped 50Hz magnetic coupling to exceed the charging current.

I suspect your old one was like my D7011 OralB which had a wall mountable charger (but a clapped battery after 10 yrs). Replaced with a Braun 1000 which has a much smaller spigot. No way will it will it fit the old charger. This being a DIY group, I suppose you could get a little bracket for the new horizontal charger.

rusty

The 3000 and 4000 chargers are definitely interchangeable; we have both, and that's also the case an earlier one we had too. Our wall charger, whih includes a brush holder, is "Type 4729"; the peg is about 10mm x 5mm (at its widest) if that helps; not sure which brush it came with but we've had it for ages.

Possibly all the NiMH ones are the same, but maybe different to the original NiCd models.

That gives me hope Reentrant if, as you seem to be saying the 3000 and

Yes 3000 and 4000 are definitely OK with a 4729.

PS - the 4000 is a £36 (inc. VAT) special offer at Costco, but only until Monday.

Continuous trickle charging will reduce battery life, so storing the brush on the charger is not the best option, though it will help Braun's sales fi gures. Cordless phones often have dumb chargers and just charge continuousl y at the 14 hour rate or thereabouts. A compromise between battery life an d flexibility. Maybe toothbrushes are made like this too.

Why do you think it is 50Hz? It makes for big, inefficient inductors.

Because I have seen no evidence of any electronics in the base.

One of my bases you can see inside from underneath - it's more or less hollow with the wire disappearing into a white potting compound blob.

I might be mistaken, but I do not see any evidence of there being any electronics in the base - just a coil on the end of a mains cable.

Someone with an oscilloscope and a small homebrew pickup coil could verify this - anyone?

I suspect unless you take one apart nobody is going to say. usually a charger for something has a specific connector, and their next model has a totally different connector or it won't fit the plastic bit even if it might have worked.

Brian

I had a look before I took the cutter to my old one and found

That is interesting - then the charging unit must have a pretty weeny PCB.

Still, looking at the circuit inside the toothbrush, it looks like it wouldn't not matter much how it was driven - it's got a zener clamp and some pretty crude circuitry on the transformer side. The worst I can see happening is it takes too long to charge on the wrong base.

Tim Watts wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@squidward.dionic.net:

To extract the motor and complete innard you need to press hard on the shaft - the illustration on the charger base is showing this.

My braun has lived on its charger for something like ten years, so I

Not sure that this is true in this case. I know they have changed the spigot size at least once, but I'm sure they have had a dozen or more models with only marginally different features. Certainly my relatively old one and my wife's fairly new one run fine on the one base. (I put mine back on the base all the time, she only puts hers on to charge when it goes flat).

I have received this reply from Braun:

I'm very sorry to tell you that the wall mounted charger won't work with any of our current toothbrush models.

With our chargers, they are continuously updated to provide the best quality, and also to keep up-to-date with regulation changes. Due to the most recent power consumption regulation changes, new toothbrushes and chargers are not interchangeable with old versions.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'll be sure to share your interest in a wall mountable charger with our Research & Development team - they are always looking for ways to improve our products to best meet the preferences of our consumers.

Pretty naff reply, there are quite a number of peeps looking for wall mounted chargers. I certainly don't want to have to put a shelf up!

And if you believe their guff I have a bridge for sale

NT

I am very interested, but only if it is in London!

Well, I can assure you that our wall mounted charger #4729 that looks exactly like this:

- except with a UK-style 2-pin shaver socket plug - works fine with the current 3000 and 4000 toothbrushes.