Should you ballance LiPo batteries everytime you charge them?

Yes its very important to balance them. If you don't balance them then eventually the cells will have very different voltages and you will end up either over discharging a cell and end up killing a cell or your lipo will not fully charge. Most lipo chargers have a balancer in them. If yours doesn't then buy your self a balancer.

Mine has a ballancer and I have been using it, just wondered if it was necessary to ballance with every charge, it takes a longer time to do it than just a regular charge. Most of the guysat our fieldare not ballancing between flights.

If you don't abuse your packs (i.e. discharge them at a higher rate than you should, or below the min voltage), then you can probably get away with occasional balancing. A few years back, balancing chargers were not as cheap as they are today, so I would just charge them, and check the individual cell voltage occasionally.

With the availability of inexpensive balancers and balancing chargers, it's best to invest in one to keep your packs balanced. I got  my balancing chargers from HobbyCity.com . Their Turnigy Accucell-6 is about $50 with shipping. That's a 50W charger that will do up to 6S LiPo packs. They also sell an adapter that will let you charge two 3S packs at a time on a single charger. I have two of these chargers with the adapters, and so I can charge (and balance) four 3S packs simultaneously. This comes in handy, since I have nine 3S 2200mAh 20C packs for my two Strykers.

I don't balance mine every time.  I have a voltage checker that checks each cells voltage , if the difference is more than 0.2 volt then  I balance the battery.  Been doing this for about 3 years and no problems yet.</p>

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Hope this helps</p>

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Thanks Red, tell me more about your voltage checker, I assume you connect it in with your ballance cable?

HobbyCity.com has a very nice voltage checker that shows you individual cell voltages and total pack voltage simultaneously. You just plug it into the balancing connector. Works with 2S to 6S packs:

LiPo BatteryMeter

I never charge without balancing.....I have many packs that are over three years old and have hundreds of flights on them and are still perfoming well. Before balancing I was only getting a year or so or about 50 cycles before the packs were shot.....JMHO

I'm sure you meant .02V, you never want to see a variance of .2V



Mike

No. I mean 0.2 v

So if one cell is 3.8 v and one is 3.99 v i won't balance

Have lipos for a couple of years now with many cycles on each.

Battle of the Ballance! Can we get someone with a profesional opinion on this?</p>

Why cant I charge my 3 cell Lipo? It is brand new, it wont take a charge. I am using Celectra 1-3 cell charger. I have a 2 cell Lipo battery and it charges fine. The settings range from 2.0 Amp - 250 Amp. 3-2-1 cell settings.

What's your battery pack voltage on the 3S pack?

If it's already fully charged, it won't charge. if it's discharged below 9V, it probably won't charge either (below min safe level of 3V per cell).

The battery pack for the 3-cell is 9.6 volts, when i was taxing my plane the elctric engine slowly lost power and then stoped, still had power to run the servos. Battery pack is brand new, is this where i will need a balancer.