Need Help With Lipo Charging
 

My brother has a orion 3200 lipo and he is using a Ice charger with the Novak power supply it puts out 14v and 10 amps, His charger is set to 3200 MAH and 100% battery capacity, charging at 2.5 amps he started charging it and the voltage went up to 8.4 volts after a few minutes and stayed there but then his charging amps came down to 1.6, he shut it off as soon as the amps dropped, the battery should not be charged below 2 amps or above 3.2, So is this a problem? or is that normal? we are new to the lipo stuff so any help would be great.

That is the way lipos charge. They start out at what charge rate you set then as soon as it hits 4.2V per cell (in this case 8.4V) it drops the charge rate to keep it from going over 8.4V. Eventually it will drop down to I think .2 amps on the ice and stop the charge.

Lipos charge in a CC/CV method which means in the beginning the current is at a constant amp (CC) and the when max voltage is hit it keeps the voltage constant (CV).

thanks kuzo so it seems to be normal I'm glad LOL will that hurt the cells charging that low though?

It will be fine.

ok thanks guys for the help

it won't hurt - it's made to be that way. a good portion of the charge time will be at lower and lower amps. Seems to take forever when you get towards the end and you get very little mA put into the pack.

Agreed. And as far as I know it doesn't hurt anything to get impatient and stop it before it finishes. With an ICE especially the end seems to take forever, a lot of the modified guys pull them early, they already have all the voltage they need. The stock guys tend to want that last little bit at the highest voltage. The balance chargers finish them off quicker in my experience. Not sure about an ICE with a balancer.

Oh, and go ahead and charge at 3.2 amps if ya want.

The ICE will stop at .1amps and yes, charge at 3.2apms or 1C. My Orion 3600 is so balanced the balancer turns off before I can start the charge so I have never charged with the balancer hooked up, therefore I don't know if it goes quicker or not.