ORIGINAL: Ron S
I finally was able to find the 14Mz in the pics - wow... [:@] Sorry for the loss. I wasn't even aware you could charge LiPos without the balance leads connected. I've never tried it without, but this is reason enough to never try).
Oh, sure you can. In fact, I have many hundreds of cycles on quite a slew of Thunder Power packs and I never use a balance charger - just a simple Triton 2 or Astro Flight LiPo charger with a single input to the discharge lead. I have the Thunder Power balancer, which is a passive device (i.e., you plug it into the pack and it uses the higher cells to charge up the lower ones) and I've never had a pack that was more than a few tenths of a volt out of balance - which the TP balancer takes care of in about 5 minutes or less.
The only fires I've had were with packs that were obviously over discharged, or over charged. That being said, LiPo fires are so stupendous (as evidence posted in this thread suggests) that I always treat them if they are about to explode at any minute - especially when being charged or after discharge until they have reached the point of room temperature... I have a scorched benchtop in my lab that is proof enough for me (a student who was not LiPo savvy charged a 1320 MAh pack at 5 amps on the Astro Flight charger - poof!).
Bob