If I have a 3 cell lipo 610mAh what is the highest rate I can safely charge it at. btw 20c

Depends on how long you want service from that pack! I hear about people charging at up to 2C, but I've seen a lot of packs swell up from being charged/discharged too fast. I always charge at 1C. Which for your pack would be 0.6 amps.

Thanks Jerry. that is what I am charging at. Seems like it takes a very long time. For the past 30 min. it is at .2. each cell is at 4.19 at present

It should take a bit over an hour if you're charging at 1C and the battery was depleted. You're putting .6 amps into a battery with ~ .6 ah (amp hours) of capacity.

Gorish sounds like you are in the balance portion of a balancing charge. The balance portion will take a while sometimes if the charger has a hard time getting happy with the voltages across the cells.

Yes it has charged but as stated is now trying to balance the pack. Depending on the charger it can take awhile as some chargers don't have good balance circuits and will either kick off before the battery is fully charged and balanced or it will not balance the cells properly. If the pack has a cell going bad it will also take a long time and may never balance properly.

I have a litte trick that helps me charge multilple packs a little quicker and still charge at 1C, but its kind of a vodoo process that's not really ideal unless you just happen to have all the gadgets laying around that I do. Ideally, you would use multiple chargers or a charger capable charging multiple packs. I do this also, but sometimes I have 8 or more three cell packs to charge and I can only charge 3 or 4 at one time with the chargers I have. I never leave charging batteries unattended, and I usually don't have several consecutive hours to baby sit the charge cycle, so heres a way that I cheat.
The middle cell on a three cell lipo is usually the one that gets drained the lowest and causes the balance cycle to take longer. Middle cell is also the cell that usually swells and fails first. Once I have all my chargers tied up, I "jump start" the next pack so it will charge quicker. I wire up the middle cell to an adjustible power supply that I have. I'll set it for about 0.25 amps of charge until a pack gets full and frees up one of the chargers. The pack in which I have "jump started" the middle cell will usually charge in about 30min when I do this. Like I said, it's not an ideal practice and probably not a good idea for most people, but it works for me.

How about close to 2 hrs. Not depleted when I started. cells were at 4.00. ended at 4.19,420,420

This is a brand new battery. Rhino 610, 20c. For my indoor yak

2 hrs is extemely long, even for a dead pack. What kind of charger are you using?

My thoughts exactly. What is the output of your charger?

Accucell 8150 150w. I have used this charger for over a year and never had a problem. I charge mostly 4 and 6 cell. 3000 to 5000 mAh. This is the smallest battery that I have tried to charge. For my indoor foamy

Sounds like your charge just has a flaky balance circuit. My Accucell 6 and Venom chargers will charge any of my 2cell and 3cell packs in about an hour, and I usually run my packs down until the esc low voltage cut off kicks in. You might try buying or making an adapter and charging two packs at once as is if they were one 6cell pack. Just a thought, don't know if it would make a difference in charge time, but at least you would be charging more than one pack at a time. You might experiement with your charge settings, hook up a watt meter or amp meter in series with the main power lead to the pack and set the charger at 1amp and see what it actually delivers. Then you might monitor each cell individually and see what's going on.

Charging takes 45 mins. and balanceing takes 1 hr. +- a few minutes.