RCCanada - Canada Radio Controlled Hobby Forum - View Single Post - Should Lipos be balanced?
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Old 11-29-2007, 08:53 PM   #8
Max Continuous
 
Join Date: Oct 2006

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Yes, you should balance your lipo batteries.

The reason being is that if a lipo cell drops below 3 volts, damage occurs to that cell shortening its' life, possibly causing it to puff or catch fire.

Your speed control is programmed to not run your batteries below 9 vlts for a 3 cell pack when fully discharged. Unfortunately, a speed controller only sees total pack voltage, so, if it sees 9 volts, it is happy regardless of individual cell voltage. As an example, a perfectly balanced pack will show 3 volts per cell or 9 volts total. An unbalanced pack may actually have cell voltage of 3.5, 3.5 and 2.0. totaling 9 volts. As you can see, the third cell is at great risk of damage.

You can check your cell voltage by putting a multimeter on the individual pins of the balancing tap.

An Astro Blinky is by far the best bang for the buck. I have some fairly expensive balancing chargers and frankly, the blinky is more accurate and demonstrates the K.I.S.S philosophy perfectly.

Hope that helps
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