Riche13,
I think you ought to approach the battery and charger manufacturers as battery technology and charger technologies have come on in leaps and bounds, chargers such as high frequency ionic chargers can charge a battery up in about 4 hrs depending on the general condition of the battery mind you if a battery has been over discharged the chargr may initiated a desulphation cycle which may take up to 11hrs to complete. I'm sure that as a student the battery companies will enthusiastically send you info on there products.

Regards Titus

I usually add that as far as the trucks hour meter, [in the 8 hours drive time in a battery cycle of 8-8-8] if you get 5 or 6 hours on the hour meter before you reach the battery meter's 20% remaining mark (which is when it it time to head to the charger) , that is about a good '8 hour shift' run.
The 8 hours cooling down time is every bit as important as the charge or run time too... don't allow a battery that is still hot/warm to the touch on the outside case to be put into service and don't allow 'quick charging' as the physics of a large lead acid battery do not respond well to less than proper charge cycles.

The charging time depends upon a charger.
As a standard, there are 8 hrs, 10 hrs, 12 hrs chargers.
If you work on shifts, yo use the 8 hrs charger, but the praxis we have here is that the truck is used till the red light on discharge indicator flashes. Than the battery is exchanged, sometimes in the middle of the next shift.
Usually for shift work, two batteries are a standard set.

Basically the charging cycle is as follows: 8 hrs charge, 8 hrs cool down, 8 hrs usage.

Thanks for the insight bbforks!

I was wondering if anyone knew what the current recharge cycle time is for an electric forklift? I am aware that forklifts can currently operate for ~8 hours on a single charge

You'll find that this industry is based on relationships rather than facts in a lot of situations. The biggest key factor in determining the success of a given unit is it's application. Undersizing a unit beats the unit to death, while oversizing it wastes financial resources- finding the balance is the key.

Thanks so much for the article. I will definitely start to leverage the site as much as possible!

Congratulations on selecting a great topic. Best place to start your research is right here on the Forkliftaction.com website. There is a huge amount of forklift information on this site. First step go to "Industry News", click on "search news archive" click on "View our past Newsletters" (near top right hand corner of the page).....or look through the options at "type of story".....look particularly at "Feature story" (there are about 160 of them) or "all News"
We did a Feature article on the Battery sector of our industry in September 2009...see www dot forkliftaction /news/newsdisplay dot aspx?nwid=7634

and I am sure that you will get a lot of help if you ask some more specific questions on this discussion forums.....remember people are busy....so focus on specific questions.