ORIGINAL: guver
Perhaps you misunderstand the distinction between series charging and balancing. No amount of series charging will ever balance packs that are out of balance. While any balance chargers do a fine job with packs that have minimal imbalance or none at all , a pack that is as severly imbalanced as yours needs to be balanced rather than series charged with a ''balance charger'' To put it another way, it doesn't matter what you are using to charge the pack , rather just that you ARE charging the pack is the trouble.
Defending HK or not , here's what I'm saying in a nutshell. ''you may just have an imbalanced pack or two'' I guess I cannot get my point across , it is the same as number 7 above. I begin to think that the trouble is me not being able to clearly articulate this concept because you are not the first one who after repeated attempts on my part seem to gloss over this concept. Unfortunately I only have 1 more way to demonstrate it.
Guver,
The balancing chargers I use balance the cells as it charges. Hence the name "balancing charger". It's pretty obvious if you watch the charger it's continually monitoring the cells as it does a "series" charge of the pack and loads any cell that has a high voltage. (don't ask me what the algo is because I don't know). I do know however that 99% of my cells charge to 4.18v +/- 0.02v.
99% of the lipos I've purchased charge and balance just fine. If it gets to the point where the lipo doesn't charge and balance correctly it's removed from the inventory. Any cell as I previously mentioned that does not charge above 3.99v obviously has a problem. As such if I receive a new pack I expect it to charge correctly just like the 99% of batteries I now have. If it doesn't, it goes back. That's my rule of thumb and that's what is working out well for me.