This entry was posted on Saturday, June 20th, 2009 at 9:22 am and is filed under Chargers, Electric RC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
During a battery’s lifetime, it can be exposed to undue amounts of stress when it is being used in an airplane and when it is being charged. The stress that you put on the battery in the plane is the reason you purchased the lipo battery pack in the first place…to power your aircraft. You can reduce some of the demand on your battery packs by not always flying at full power. We can also size our packs to the motor demands so that the power consumption never exceeds 75% of the battery’s maximum output. Take note, however, that no matter what we do, when the batter pack is in the plane and the power is on, electrons will be pulled from the pack. During this process the pack will get warm while giving up that stored reserve of electrons, and its lifetime will become a little shorter. Fortunately, with a balance charger, you can rejuvenate packs to extend their lifetime a little during the charging process. A cell balancer keeps all of the cells in a pack at the same level of charge, which is very important. During the discharge process that happens during flight, the power is pulled from all of the cells at the same time. As the battery packs age, one or more of the cells do not deliver the power at the same rate of discharge as the other cells. At first, this is a very slight difference. Each time the battery pack is charged without balancing, the charger will keep pumping current until the battery pack, as a whole, is at the level of the cutoff voltage. This means that the lower cell is not brought up to the full level of charge as the other cells, which are now actually getting a higher level of charge to makeup for the weak cell. When the battery pack is put back in the plane, the motor draws current from the pack as a whole and does not know that one cell is not discharging the same amount. As this cycle continues, the weaker cell gets farther out of balance from the stronger cells. This process continues until one day the weak cell can not handle the rate of discharge or one of the stronger cells can’t handle the demands put on it by the motor. Either way the results are the same; it is time to buy a new battery pack.
July 15th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Lipo Batteries, A Balancing Act | Air Land Sea Hobbies…
I love flying my plane for hours in the open air and I can only do that when all my batteries are fully charged. That’s why I got an rc battery charger in your site. It really tops up my batteries efficiently and I save up on buying batteries all t…
July 15th, 2009 at 1:07 am
Lipo Batteries, A Balancing Act | Air Land Sea Hobbies…
I love flying my plane for hours in the open air and I can only do that when all my batteries are fully charged. That’s why I got an rc battery charger in your site. It really tops up my batteries efficiently and I save up on buying batteries all t…
July 15th, 2009 at 1:20 am
Lipo Batteries, A Balancing Act | Air Land Sea Hobbies…
I am so glad that I found your site! My rc car needs some rc accessories to keep it going and for it to look good. I found everything that I needed and more in your site! Now, every time I visit your site, I always get something for my car. I’m r…
July 15th, 2009 at 1:21 am
Lipo Batteries, A Balancing Act | Air Land Sea Hobbies…
I am so glad that I found your site! My rc car needs some rc accessories to keep it going and for it to look good. I found everything that I needed and more in your site! Now, every time I visit your site, I always get something for my car. I’m r…
July 15th, 2009 at 1:21 am
Lipo Batteries, A Balancing Act | Air Land Sea Hobbies…
I am so glad that I found your site! My rc car needs some rc accessories to keep it going and for it to look good. I found everything that I needed and more in your site! Now, every time I visit your site, I always get something for my car. I’m r…
July 15th, 2009 at 1:22 am
Lipo Batteries, A Balancing Act | Air Land Sea Hobbies…
I am so glad that I found your site! My rc car needs some rc accessories to keep it going and for it to look good. I found everything that I needed and more in your site! Now, every time I visit your site, I always get something for my car. I’m r…
July 15th, 2009 at 1:22 am
Lipo Batteries, A Balancing Act | Air Land Sea Hobbies…
I am so glad that I found your site! My rc car needs some rc accessories to keep it going and for it to look good. I found everything that I needed and more in your site! Now, every time I visit your si…
July 15th, 2009 at 1:23 am
Lipo Batteries, A Balancing Act | Air Land Sea Hobbies…
I am so glad that I found your site! My rc car needs some rc accessories to keep it going and for it to look good. I found everything that I needed and more in your site! Now, every time I visit your site, I always get something for my car. I…