ORIGINAL: Swift427
I was trying to balance out the cell’s discharge voltages at LVC of a LiPo because of a LVC discharge imbalance (due most likely to some cell capacity differences in one of my 3S LiPo. So, I got thrown off the track by thinking that most everyone has a 3S LiPo with cells of unequal quality/capacity due to misuse or a cheap LiPo to begin. This inequality becomes more evident when checking the difference in each cell’s voltage shortly before and after the ESCs LVC. As discussed previously this imbalance in capacity can result in at least one of the cells going … say as low as 2.50v or lower depending on the discharge imbalance in cell capacities. Even with a presumable safe 3S LVC of 9 volts(3v per cell), one of the cells could get drained too much (2.40v, 3.25v, 3.35v = 9.00v) with an imbalance in cell capacities becoming more noticeable as the discharge progresses to LVC.
So, even though a LiPo pack may be “Perfectly Balanced” at a 3S full charge of 12.6v(4.2v per cell) it can still be problematic if each cell’s capacity at either full charge and/or discharge is significantly different enough to result in cell voltages at LVC ... such as 3.21v, 2.56v, 3.23v = 9.0v
This is not a bad idea to have "balanced" or equal resting voltages at the discharged state. It is attainable very easily by balancing "at the bottom" Ideally we want cells capacity matched pefectly so that the voltage is pefectly equal at the top and at the bottom. If I had a pack that was off by a certain amount I would like to split the difference so that it would be in balance at the 50% mark. The smallest cell would then go over voltage at the top and under voltage at the bottom.
Ultimately we can tolerate any amount of mismatched capacity as long as we don't go out of spec at the top of bottom, right?