I am pretty new to electrics. I have 3 Thunder Power Li-Poly 1320mah packs. My charger is an Astroflight 109. How important is the need to balance the batteries? I was at the WRAM show this weekend and talked to Jason Shulman. He said the smaller Li-poly packs(1320 being pretty small) don't really need to be balanced. The guys at FMA said that balancing is one of the most important things for a Li-poly battery, regardless of size. Just wondering what some other people thought about balancing.

Thanks,
Tony Gagliardi Jr.

HCC, I think it's a must. If you have 3 cells and 2 are at 3.7 volt and 1 at 4.0 volt, you have the chance of over charging that one cell and ruining it or causing a fire.

If they are not far off and you balance them you would have better proformance out of them just beacuse all cells would be equal. Again 2 cells at 3.7 and one at 4.0 when the esc sees the overall voltage drop to 9.0 volts for a 3 cell it would be sooner because 2 cells were dropping faster than if they were equal.

If all 3 cells were balanced and charged to 4.2, your voltage will hold longer and this increases your run time.
Why not get the most out of what you paid for. Not only that, the way I see it, it's like a small tune-up for a car-keeps it running clean and smooth. BG

Tests done by FMA and for FMA pretty well supports that balancing significantly increases cycle life, regardless of the capacity of the packs. It would be interesting to see what Jason Shulman has in the nature of test data to support his claim.

Looks like I will be getting the Thunder Power Balancer.

Thanks,
Tony

Just make sure you plan on sticking with Thunder Power batteries. Others may or may not be compatible with the TP balancer.

Red,
Thanks for the info and help. All my batteries are TP that is why I am getting the TP balancer. Is there a balancer out there that can be used on different brands of batteries?

Tony

Any balancer can be used with any Lithium Polymer battery. The trick is getting the pin connections right between the two. There seems to be an international plot to make sure there are no two that are compatible with any other two.[:'(]

Red: so no matter what kind of lipo,you must use a balancer.Also do you connect while you are charging or after charging.
thanks ffdq

Agreed, multicell lipo packs should be balanced.

Some balancing schemes work in conjuction with a Lipo charger, others work independenty as stand alone charger/balancers. Others will balance a pack by discharging each cell to the level of the lowest cell prior to charging, these will also limit the charge to each cell so that it does not exceed 4.2 volts. The balancing issue is addressed in a number of different ways. The simplest is to measure each cell voltage and then charge them individually. No balancer is required, only your regular lipo charger set for single cell charge.

Red,

I have several LI-PO packs all without balancers. I plan on adding balancers to these packs as well as the packs I plan on building in the near future.

I believe I want a balancer to balance the packs as I am charging them. What balancer do you suggest? I want to spend my tight RC $$ wisely yanno.....

Also, since I do not have any balance connectors, my retrofit to the above packs will be a floppy disk drive power connector. See any problems with this?

It pisses me off that the MFG's cant come up with a connector so that everyone can be on the same page. So for now I will cut, snip, twist and solder!!

Thanks Red, and the group....

Stan
WV

Whymee, I use the Hyperion LBA6 balancer. It's a stand alone or with charger. Never had a problem and it keeps my cells in check.
One note though, I mainly use Polyquest, E-tec, Hyperion lipos, and all these batteries plugs fit this balancer. BG

At the WRAM show FMA showed the BalancePro and CellPro chargers. Both balance as they charge. They are compatable with the KOKAM batteries they sell. They also had some prototype adapters for Thunderpower and Polyquest batteries to be charged with those chargers. This seems to be the first attempt for manufacturers to support each others balancing leads.

Does the Thunder Power TP-205 Smart Balancer charge the batteries at the same time?

You can't expect a standard to pop up overnight. In the next couple of years, you'll probably see one balancing tap design win out over all the others to become the standard, but it'll be a matter of the marketing departments from the various companies duking it out to see which one is the most popular with us, the end users. That's how standards are usually developed: Each company comes up with a design that they think is best, they slug away at each other on the open market, and the one that sells the most becomes the standard.

This is a competitive market, and only when there is a clearly dominant force in that market will you see the smaller players fall in line. Until then, to be compatible with another manufacturer's technology is admitting defeat, and might even be patent infringement, punishable by sizable lawsuits. Cooperatin means lost revenue. That's business in a free market enterprise, and why our R/C stuff doesn't cost four times as much as it does.

Hi,

I also use the Hyperion with my Triton charger and charge my Polyquests with the balancer. However. I also have a Koakam pack with a Kokam chrge conector. Can I buy an adpater for chrging the Kokam 3S with the Hyperion balancer and my Triton?

If not Can I make one?

Thx

Hi Red

I have Tanic Packs and have just purchased the Balancer, what is the procedure in using it?

How do i know when it is done etc?


Ray

I have never owned a balancer, but I have balancing wires on all my lipos and every now and then I charge the cells independently. If you have the time, this method will not cost you anything. I attach a picture of a two cell pack where the first cell is charged.

Andreas

I just got a balancer for my 3c 1300 packs that new was getting 14 min flights...went down to 5 minutes...took my meter, had one cell at 4.2 the others at like 3.6....so run time was nothing...I used the balancer below...it comes with some adapters...one use...I got 10 plus minute very HARD 3D flight...THE FIRST TIME AFTER BALANCING AND TOP OFF CHARGE !!!! my timer goes off at 10 mins on my tx and I had power to spare....the guy Jun at this company is VERY HELPFUL ALSO...he doesn't recommend charging with the balancer attached, takes longer to charge, being the balancer is taking out voltage as the charger is putting it in...he recommends balancing before charging...check them out....very powerful batteries at GREAT price....FAST shipping too..oh, if you get a battery and balancer or a balancing charger you get a discount..so call him before you order...at least he offered it to me, so no promise but was 10$ of a 30$ balancer.

http://www.xushobby.com/servlet/Cate...-poly+Chargers

I just picked up the AstroFlight "Blinky" balancer and am very happy with it. It can be used before, during, or after you've charged a lipo. It's a tiny little thing somewhat smaller than a credit card. It features enough pins on it to do up to a 6 (8?) cell lipo pack. I had just recently picked up a Common Sense lipo (3 cell 2000ma 10C (20 amp with 30 burst ability)) for $44 having heard good things about the quality and low price of their packs. While there are a few sources for even cheaper packs out there like my Dymond Motorsports packs of the same specs for $35, they didn't come with a balancing plug already installed like the Common Sense packs do. The Common Sense packs feature a 4 pin Molex plug and they recommend the Astro Blinky for use with it. Fits the Common Sense plug and a few others lipo companies with no modification. For others like ThunderPower lipos you simply move a wire or two on the lipo's plug, or use a harness adaptor that Astro/Common Sense sells. Being so happy with the Blinky thus far, I opened up my Dymond packs to add balancer plugs to them as well (See "Adding A Balancing Plug To A 3 Cell Lipo", or the thread related to Blinky/Common Sense). It was fairly easy to do and now I have confidence that none of my packs are getting out of balance.

The "Blinky" sells for $25 and performs several functions. When you first plug it into the lipo 3 of the leds (for a 3 cell pack) will light up for about five seconds. This is indicating that all three cells are above the minimum safe voltage level for each cell. It will then go into balancing mode. When you see a led light up for a few seconds at a time this tells you that Blinky is bleeding off excess voltage on that cell to get it to match the lowest cell voltage in the pack. It will continue to do this until all 3 cells match. You can also plug the lipo into any lipo charger to charge while Blinky is still doing it's work. After the pack has charged Blinky may still be active for a bit until it's got all three cells to perfectly match. It won't slow down your charge time as it's only bleeding off power to a cell as needed in the 100 m/v range. If you are noticing a much longer charge time then it's because you've got a cell or two that is way out of balance and was false terminating the charge before being balanced by Blinky. Blinky should be done balancing a pack by the time the charge has ended. If, however, a pack is way out of balance it may take longer for Blinky to level things out. That's why I prefer to plug Blinky into the pack before I charge it and let the balancer get things near where they should be before hitching the lipo up to the charger.