Balance Charger - best ?
 

Hi

Ant top tips for a really good balance charger - that balances properly. I have the £200 Elan double jobbie - but it takes ages to balance - or doesn't - not impressed. Think I need to be looking at non RC - Car (all show and no substance) chargers - so please only recommend something you know works well - not the one with the most shiny buttons :)

Lrp Quadra competition charger v1 but you need to buy the balance lead separately. Comes with usb charging socket, small compact and is mains powered but believe it can use 12v as well but never tried, if so youll need the adaptors to do. Runs faultlessly with me, simple to use and batts are looked after using this. Does numerous things as well, wont buy anything else

Think you need to be running through the specifications of the various chargers.
How much balance current do they *actually* provide. (Think mine is 0.8A, the other, cheapo charger is 0.2A from memory)
Ages to balance might also be an indication that a) your charger is out of calibration or b) your batteries are dying.

Andy if you wanna sell the elangear x2 LMK ,if the price is right i might be interested.

Shiny

Just double checked, my shiny charger is 0.2A per cell.
Cheapy is max 0.2A......

Still only adds a minute or two to charge time using the shiny charger.

Sometimes a charger takes ages to balance or doesn't do it at all if your lipo is old or very out of balance! Try the charger on a newer set of lipo said before binning it off. I had this problem with a set of old Orion lipos, they would take about 3hrs to balance but when I got anew set they took less than 1hr.

Andy maybe your hobbyking batteries are the issue, and perhaps you need to balance up individual cells within the packs.
see: https://youtu.be/wIbHLacozFo

Cheers Neal - I watched that the other day - very interesting :)
I have new lipos that take ages to balance - Orion as well as HPI - not just the cheap zippy lipos I bought for the boys!

From watching the video it looks like the balancing process is pretty crap really - in chargers in general - so I was wondering if someone else (other than the main names) does it better.

Been looking at the CellPro stuff?

By the way Neal - I charged that Turnigy cell on its own and all is well now with it.
It took a lot of charge - so was ridiculously out of balance. Using the charger to balance it - on a balance charge with the other charged cell connected - would never have worked - especially now I know how balancing works!

Yeah back in the day cells were cycled and matched together so the pack would perform to its best. I do wonder why this isn't done now, given that charge balancing process is so inaccurate/inefficient and not really very good. I don't think its an issue just for the cheaper packs either, big named brands are the same. More expensive chargers don't necessarily give better or more predictable results.
It may be best to build a balance charge lead and charge each cell in the pack individually to achieve a manual balance. I used to charge out of balance saddle like this anyway, but more difficult on a shorty without making up a lead.

Neal - those little Hobbyking lipo LCD capacity jobbies are a lifesaver - on my Turnigy Lipo I could see that it was only 75% charged even though the charger had dropped to about 0.1 amp charger rate - as it was 'trying' to balance it.

By using the LCD capacity thing :) I could see that one cell was low and overall capacity was way off - so I charged the cell on it's own and now it balances fine again :)

I have made a little lead as per the video - to do the same with stick packs when needed as it's much better for the pack (I assume) than trying to balance them on the charger :)

My Orion Touch Pro has been totally faultless, balances in just a few minutes after reaching full charge voltage. It's by far the best balancing charger I've used, my only regret is waiting as long as I did to get one!

Make sure your charge leads are in good condition, you will have lots of problems balancing if there's any poor connectors. In fact poor leads can put a perfectly good pack out of balance. In my experience good 2S packs never go out of balance in normal use.

If you've got a multi port charger, can you charge cells individually at the same time through the balance port, or would that upset the charger?

The best chargers are what the flight guys use not the shiny car ones most of us use, so any of the Junsi iCharger range, Hyperion EOS or the FMA/Revolectrix Powerlab series.

Graupner polaron, I use it for plane lipos too, bit dear but but very good. Fast lad performance were the cheapest when I bought mine.

What he says^^ plus you need a good power supply I use a Efuel 1200 50 amp 30V one

LOL all my "good" (expensive) packs have either gone out of balance (and needed a few cycles of charge/discharge or individual/1s charging to get them back) or swollen to destruction after a year or so in use (or in one case within a week.)

So I just use cheapish packs and plan/budget for semi regular replacements. (Gens Ace and Nanotech)

And FWIW I always balance charge.

(Currently using an RS16 and the dedicated power supply, the charger actually failed last week, the shop has already replaced it at 18 months old with no questions asked)

I use a Turnigy Accucell 6, great value for money and had no problems balancing my Turnigy 2s Lipos. No problems charging NiMH and lead acid either.

Both of mine needed regular recalibration, and one exploded, smoke everywhere. The remaining one is an emergency spare, and discharger........

So i guess by "great value for money" you mean "cheap enough to be disposable"?

;)