I have an interesting question and hope someone can give me an answer. I work at a hobby shop that occasionally hosts birthday parties with six cars that each run on a 10,600mAH 1s battery. I'm tired of running around the shop and using every charger in the place to charge the packs. I recently acquired an iCharger 406 duo and am interested in using it in some way to charge all six of these monster 1s pack at once. My question is, what would be the most efficient way to get the job done? Also, what products do I need to purchase to be able to do it?

Thank you in advance,
Nate

You can parallel charge them, but they need to very close to the same voltage, according the link I’ve posted below, about 0.1V. You’ll also need a parallel charging board. This is an easy way to charge multiple batteries off a single charger port.

https://oscarliang.com/parallel-charging-multiple-lipo

I used balancing bord for my 2s lipos, but only 2 at the time really, it works 🤷‍♂️

If you're in a hobby shop, most of the bits should be nearby

Someone may come up with a better idea, but I don't think charging them in parallel is going to the best. Having the make sure they are at the same level before connecting them will be more trouble than it's worth.

So, if you have six 1S batteries, treat them as two 3S batteries and use one charging port of the 406 Duo for each to balance charge them. You'll probably need to make some new cables for each set to connect them in series and connect to the balance port. Make sure they're clearly labelled and then it doesn't matter if they're not equal voltages when you hook them up.

That's what I was thinking but wanted to hear it from someone else lol. Thank you very much, I'll try it at work in the morning and see what I come up with.

If they weren't such high capacity parallel would be fine and easy to setup. 10k mah is big though. Just setup a nice balance lead and high current connectors on the main feed and it will be fine. 3s x2 like PDR said makes sense.

I would charge 3 packs in parallel for each port and charge both ports at 30A each.


Post #2 above brings a very important caution that each pack is reasonably close in voltage before you connect them together.


A fast way to do this is to bring each pack to storage mode individually, then group 3 packs together to finish the charge in parallel.

Just curious, but any reason why you wouldn’t opt for a multi-channel charger? It eliminates the hassle of ensuring all packs are at the same voltage (based on the advice given here), not to mention that you wouldn’t be stuck waiting for any given pack if they don’t all reach their peak around the same time.

I mean I guess it depends on how quickly you can recoup the ROI on such a purchase if you don’t already have the charger, but at least it might eliminate some clutter if you just had 2 4-channel chargers rated high enough that you can use all channels simultaneously at a decent clip?

For my needs I own a 2 port charger which can sustain up to 4 classes of racing.

I maintain 1 battery pack per race class with the need to charge 2 cars at the same time.... generally I get into a race/marshal/race scenario to where I need to place 2 packs on at the same time... I can't parallel charge them because they aren't going to be discharged to the same voltage. Both those packs are typically finished charging by the time I'm ready to place the other 2 classes on the charger. I don't always run 4 classes in the same race day as this is only for larger events but for regular club racing I typically only run 2 classes.

the best way is to make a single HArness all 6 in series with a balance plug and you basically make a single 6s pack once they are all connected. and you would charge it at 6s 10.5amps
or you can do 2 harnesses as 3s or 3 harnesses at 2s so for those days you dont use all 6. and they would all be 10.5Amps and whatever cell cell count you have.

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You need a nice Power Supply to charger at 30 Amps. and even then you wont be able to push 30 AMps per channel at the same time. even the 2000Watt 24v PS is 80AMps but thats if fed from 220V input. on 110v its limited 60amps (in a perfect world) it will get close but that PS is $350!

I believe it can be done for around $15, more info here on a 750W supply conversion:
https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...0#post43199655

2S x 4.2V x 30A = 252W

30A won't break a sweat for 3 packs charged in parallel

If you double this load to 504W, you still have 246W of spare unused power on 12V

If the 3 batteries are not close in voltage, won't the charger first balance them to the same voltage? I have never had a LiPo where the cells were not within 0.05V but I heard some complain that the balance process can be slow. Hopefully someone with experience in the 406 charging an out of balance battery can chime in.

Ichargers will start adding power and balancing as it charges. They also do have a balance only mode as well.