Low current lipo charging.
 

Hi guys, I was hoping someone could tell me if there are any negative effects caused by charging lipo cells at lower currents (around 3 amps). I remember with Nicad cells the harder you charged them the more "puncy" they used to be. Didn't want to make my lipos lazy by charging them lower than their 1C sugested rating.

Reason I ask is that I've just purchased an Imax quatro charger allowing 4 packs to be charged at once. At preasent I only have a 10 amp PSU so either I charge 2 at a time or stick 4 on at a lower current and go back to bed for another hour on a Sunday morning!! A 3 amp charge with the PSU set to 13.8v draws only 2.43 amps.

Any negative or even possitives for charging at a low current much appreciated :D

John.

Well seeing as lipos have hardly if any memory effect I highly doubt it would make a difference

No negative effects at slow charging.
Better idea is to charge them on a sat. Any reason why you need 4 packs charged?
I only own 1 pack...

Cheers guys, I have been using 1 pack all last year without issues. Lipo's are cheap now (intellect 5200 45c saddles from Hong Kong) so I've bought a job lot. Mostly so I don't have to lug the 12v battery in and out the car on a Sunday and also just to make racing that little bit more relaxed when there are not many heats racing. I know there's no need for so many packs but they'll last several years with only doing 1 charge cycle a week as supposed to 1 or 2 years so no extra expense in the long term I expect.

Also don't like to charge on a Saturday as the meetings are sometimes rained off meaning it takes ages to put the cells back into a safe storage voltage.

a 12volt 10amp power supply will charge more than 2 lipos at 5 amps ur onlt charging to 8.4 volts i recon 3 safely, try it see how u get on

Sounds like a reasonable plan