Balance Charging only pulls 0.01-0.03 amps, is it supposed to take a week to balance charge?

Hi guys, some of my cells are appearing to stray from 4.2v after a full charge, so i figured it was time to balance things out. However, after 45 minutes my cells are still at the same reading. Is this to be expected with balance charging? I have a Turnigy Accucell 6; so far its been very reliable for fast charging.Uploading…

I had the same problem, mine did that for a couple of days then I heard this popping noise and 2 of the cells were destroyed.

Be sure you’ve got the charger set for the right kind of battery. This may or may not have been my problem.

DougM

Oh crap! Thats not good. Maybe ill just stick to the fast charging, im definitely in LiPo mode though. Thanks for the input!

I believe it helps if your power supply has a sightly higher voltage output.

For example, I use a Boosted charger and my cells are charged at 43.2v yet the charger outputs 43.6. the BMS shots off when fully charged but my cells are still all balanced.

45 minutes I wouldn’t worry about, many hours I would worry about. The other thing you can do if you can reach the connectors is charge each cell individually, then go ride it, then balance charge it.

Do you only have 4 cells or are 2 of them registering zero volts?

You might be onto something, it looks like my power supply is only pushing 13ish volts. I can still fast charge at 5 amps, so maybe balance charging requires more volts or something. Ill look into a higher voltage power supply in the meantime. Thanks for the input!

Ah man, i think im a little too inexperienced to charge the individual cells, but thats a solid idea! I have 3 4s batteries, which explains the 0s. I think i might need a more powerful power supply or just deal with the imbalance. I never really discharge it past 80% or so so i dont think i should be TOO worried, right?

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Balance charging usually happens in the hundreds of milliamps, so let it run for a couple of hours (monitored) and see how it does. If you’ve selected the right battery chemistry you’re pretty safe.

Hey doug, so just a positive update here. I let my charger balance charge for 3 hours and sure enough it did its job! All cells are up to 4.20 and 4.19, i think a weekly balance charge should be in order from now on. One of my batteries had cells all the way down at 4.14 when others were 4.20. Thanks for all your input!

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You should balance charge evertime you charge lipos. Charge at 1c (5000mah @ 5amps). Long balance times is a sign of bad or poor quality lipos. Hobbyking lipos are a hit or miss

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I would totally balance charge each time but with 3 batteries and one charger, and as long as it takes to gain .5 volts of charge, it would take nearly 27 hours just to recoup my daily morning commute :frowning: . Right now i charge at .75c, which takes about an hour and a half to recoup the 1.8 volts i spend getting to work quickly. I think i just need a more powerfil

I think a parallel charging board would be better than not balance charging. I charge my lipos like this (not my photo) and I charged all my batteries one time in 15min because i was in a hurry.

15 minutes would be a dream, thankfully I have 8 hours during the day I can charge. Is it really a huge deal if one cell is lower than the others? I’ve yet to drain any single cell lower than 3.8 volts since I use the board almost exclusively for my 4 mile commute to work and charge it during the day.

I guess it might not be the biggest deal if the voltage difference is not more than .4 volts. Ideally you want them at same voltage for longevity. I’m more worried about overcharging never go above 4.2v per cell

it takes so long to balance charge because your cells are so badly of of balance. you can speed it up by setting your charger to 2S and then charging the 2 cells that are only reading 4.16V

oh shoot i didn’t realize this was possible! I’ll try it out real quick!

meh, no luck. my charger gave me an error saying I had the wrong number of cells selected. Good news is that even with the cells out of balance, “fast” .75C charging has never taken the cells over 4.2, and they’ve never been drained past 3.8 since my commute is so short. I’ll just keep balance charging them every day after the fast charge cuts off until they’re back in order, 2 of my 3 batteries are right where they should be with just a .01v variance. Thanks for all of the tips and pointers, lesson learned is to balance charge as much as possible.

I agree, and also I feel like I’m sacrificing a bit of range with 2 cells being .05 and .04 v off, thats almost an entire volt, which is pretty significant. Thankfully my chargers fast charge setting doesn’t take any individual cells over 4.2 before it cuts off, leaving the others at 4.16 and 4.15. I plan to fast charge till it cuts off, then balance charge the other two up as close to 4.2 as I can before I need to ride again. Thanks for all of your pointers!

you need to obviously isolate the 2 cells. you cant use the same balance lead. you need to custom make a 2S lead to do it. other wise the charger just wont let you