Anyone Know About Old Battery Chargers?

[Turbo]

I bought this at an auction, partly for curiosity, mainly as it was cheap.

Its a Heayberd battery charger, not sure of the vintage but it's not as old as it looks as the wiring inside is all pvc insulated, I was expecting cloth wrapped rubber! It has some nice old style ammeters.

It seems to have 3 separate charging circuits labelled as follows.
1-30 LA Cells at 1/4 - 1 amp
1-18 LA Cells at 1/2 - 2 amp
1-12 LA Cells at 1 - 5 amp

I'm assuming that LA stands for lead acid but there's no mention what the output voltage is.

Each circuit also has course and fine control knobs, not sure what these do - maybe to adjust the current depending on the number of batteries being charged?

If I can get it going it might be a good power supply for my electrolysis.

Any advice on this charger would be appreciated!

 

[dannyp]

well its old allright, at 2 ish volts per cell for LA ( 60+ volts ) but 1/4 to 1 amp output i can only think that was used for chargeing up batteries for old valve radios

 

[Gareth J]

Cripes, wouldn't look out of place on set firing up Frankenstein's monster!

Should be a useful power supply though if it's still working.

 

[Windy Miller]

Difficult to judge the size of it, but i'm wondering if it could be a milk float battery charger?

 

[awemawson]

Well if the internal wiring is all pvc then unless it's been rewired it's definitely not for valve radio batteries.

I'd imagine each circuit is a simple transformer, rectifier, and current limiting pair of rheostats for the coarse and fine adjustments..

The current rating looks very low for either a milk float or forklift, both of which use banks of many cells, but just possibly ok for float charging over a very long time period.

We need internal photographs please

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

Could be a Forklift battery charger, or as said a milk float charger.

Heayberd ended up as part of Westinghouse, I think they used to supply batteries, chargers in late 70's early 80's to Halfords and Les smiths motor factors.

Their big forklift chargers could be used to charge whole batteries or new single cells fitted to a battery.

There should be a data plate inside the machine, either on the lid or service plate.

The nearest modern equipment is Chloride battery chargers, Aldi and lidil in their distribution centres had banks and banks of them to charge their pallet trucks.


The last time I saw Heayberd chargers in use was on Dairy, long since closed, back in 1993.

 

[normspanners]

there were only two ever made,

Its for charging 2nd world war Italian submarine batteries, they put in on to charge in 1941 and its now ready to sail !!!
Yep they are starting to charge the second one now... so they are prepared

 

[wookie]

well its old allright, at 2 ish volts per cell for LA ( 60+ volts ) but 1/4 to 1 amp output i can only think that was used for chargeing up batteries for old valve radios

I'd tend to agree with you, it looks to have an old round 3 pin plug attached so it ain't gonna be charging anything big such as a milk float for example.

@Turbo I can see why you bought it though, I'm a sucker for old stuff like that.

 

[Turbo]

I'm not sure about a dairy but it has spent time in a cattle shed as it has been sprayed with cow manure, probably why it's so rusty! Someone has started to remove one side panel, I'll try to get it off completely & take some pics but the screws look very rusty! It seems to have only one big transformer with loads of tappings. As spotted by wookie it has a 15a round pin plug fitted so it's not going to have a massive output.