Multiple battery charging

[Vinny Solstice]

Is there any way to charge these little 1 cell lipos more than 1 at a time . like maybe 2 or 3 in series. If so how would you wire it? Charging at only .4 they are taking over an hour to charge . Can't charge any higher than 1c right ? Does that sound normal . Just getting into electrics I've been flying nitro for a long time.

[Dusty1000]

Personally I have a few stock chargers which at 500mAh, charge the 400mAh lipos at 1.25C. They generally charge in around half the time it's taking yours though - perhaps I don't run them down as much.

To charge a few at a time on a balance charger you would probably be best to make a lead to wire them up as if they were a multi-cell pack, i.e. in series, pos to neg etc

Dusty

[SQRT(-2)]

http://www.clubheli.com/Chargery-Pow...AL_p_2207.html

That is what I use, it works great.

[Steve Joblin]

Me too! love it baby!

[jgupton]

You can pick up the balance chargers plugs online or at the LHS and then build a charging harness. There are a couple of threads over at rcgroups on it to help understand the wiring. Given we're talking about lipos, you want to make sure you know what you're doing.

I've been able to make harnesses for 2, and 3 (have the parts for 4 cells but haven't gotten around to putting it together) - then I just adjust the voltage and amperage settings on your charger. I generally charge my oversky 20c 400 mah batteries 3 at a time in about 30 minutes or so (1.2 amps). It can take longer if one of the cells is far enough off compared to the others voltage wise (the balancing part takes a lot longer, but at least I don't have to worry as much about overcharging a cell).

[mikejbb]

I charge up to 5 of these in parallel at one time adjusting the amp setting accordingly. I say 5 because I made an octopus with 5 leads. If I needed more, I'd make another octopus and put those in parallel. I used to think multiple cells in parallel was a bad idea until I read a post going through the math and it does make sense to charge in parallel. So assumming you want to charge at 1c and you have 3 - 500mah batteries in parallel, you charge all 3 at the same time at 1.5amps. It's always best if they are run down similarly, but not required. Your risk is that one of them disconnects itself, and I've never had that happen. I've changed to micro deans and they won't disconnect.

I have 400, 500, 600, 720, and 850's and have charged them all in parallel trying to only charge batteries with similar capacity together, but it's not supposed to matter anyway. I've bought hobby city batteries and soldered on micro-deans and painted the connections as well as the above mentioned octopus's with liquid shrink wrap to stop shorts.
__________________________________________________ ____
Mike
Walkera BL 4G3 stock bl main 16T, 2.9g tail, sometimes 2 batteries
Eflite Blade MCX/MSR both cusker moded for outdoor flight
Function over ALL else
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