Originally Posted by
Cain
Something to keep in mind, and this is based on my experiences with 1/8 electric back when 20C was considered "High" and we pushed it to the limits on cutoff voltages. If you are not balancing your packs every charge, if you do have a situation of a weaker cell, you could potentially be over discharging that poor voltage cell during use since cut-off voltage is a measurement across all cells combined, not individually. (now, that would be all cool feature on an ESC!)
And if you have a weak cell and you are charging your packs without regards to the voltages seen across each cell (which usually a balance charge setting takes into account, though it may be different on other chargers), you could *potentially* overcharge one of the cells.
We had someone do this who was new to lipos. He went ahead and charged a pack he had been using for awhile (7.4V pack) without balance charging it.
His charger without that setting turned on ignored the individual voltages of each cell and just went for what was the total voltage to charge to. Well, one cell was very low, the other higher, and he ended up from what we can tell spiking that other "high" cell way up there causing a severally puffed pack. Pretty surprised it didn't just burst as we are talking stovetop popcorn size and cause a fire which considering where he was charging the pack (and not in a liposack) would have been quite expensive.
So in short, can you do it? yes, you can charge your lipos without balancing them and probably 99% have no issues. My luck though, I end up being the 1% that does.
But considering that in general the amount of time saved at least from what I have seen on my chargers is extremely minimal (especially with packs that don't have issues as when in use, the voltages should be pretty close anyway during discharge) I don't see a benefit in not balance charging the lipos.
Just my opinion, ultimately people have to make there own decisions on what they want to do.
I won't necessarily disagree with that so much as as you a question. If you're worried about a bad cell, don't you think you should find that bad cell and not be putting bandaids on your batteries by balancing them? You're only postponing the problem, a rather bad problem. Honest question, not condescending.
You're right about the lipocutoff, however: I have a simple cellchecker when i'm testing and priming batteries, new and on the watch list. If a battery is working properly it will never have the concern of that 1% you speak of. I do totally 100% understand being that 1% though. believe me.
You guys can balance all you want but I really think if it's being done every single time out of a kind of fear, I think you need to re-evaluate. My Airplane customers balance once a SEASON. (that's 5 months) Using massive 5-6cells in parallel to attain 12s in their 30%'s etc etc. They cellcheck out of pure random thought and the only issues that occur were never going to be fixed by balancing.
Bottom Line: Occasional Balancing is never an issue unless a cell was inherently bad and then you can get it to the warranty faster because you're not bandaiding the issue before it's too late to notice. Food for thought.
(just this last month I had a brandnew Reedy4s for my RC8 that wouldn't balance properly the
day I got it... So I babied it till it puffed and they're fighting me for the warranty because it was "almost out of warranty"
(sent the battery back 2weeks of owning it))