Will my charger shut off if I leave it in for a long time?

Question

I've looked through similar answers, and now know a little about charging and overcharging.

So, I just got a new airsoft gun through China (via Chicago, shipped UPS ground), and more specifically, this one:

http://www.airsplat.com/Items/ERM-JG-M16R-620.htm

Now, the battery pack is a back of 7 NiCads wrapped in plastic. It says I should charge them for 8 hours with my charger. I was just wondering, if I were to put it in the charger and leave it there for, say, 10 or 12 hours, would that be a bad thing? Or do I have to time it out to be less than or equal to 8 hours?

Here's some tech specs for anyone that knows electronics:

The batteries are 1.2 V, SC size, 1500 mAh Shuangbao batteries. The charger is says it's a Class 2 power supply, Model YX01-18 ; Imput 120 V AC 60 Hz 70 mA ; Output 12V DC 300mA. Made in China. Now, I don't understand about half of this stuff, but it might help with your answer if you know about these things.

Answer 1

It should shut off. It looks like these are similar to radio controlled aircraft batteries that would come with a charger that would do that.

Answer 2

Nickel Cadniums are not very forgiving, meaning they have 'memory' if you discharge them completely and repeatedly they will nolonger attain 'complete' charge.

Charging NiCads is quite failsafe IF the charging curcuit contains voltage regulators.

The output of your charger being quite low at 0.3A @ 12VDC is not going to cause any damage to the pack if you leave it on for twice the recommended time. the only issue is heat dissapation via the transformer pluged into the wall, but even at 0.07A it is very low and will not generate much heat on standby and therefore will not make a noticable difference to power consumption.

Batteries by nature will only charge if a difference of at least 10% is present, so when your Nicads are fully charged they will nolonger accept a charge and this will basically condition the charger to a standby "float" status.