Balancing

[saleens7]

When charging lipo cells, is it absolutely necessary to balance them? The reason why is because im planning to wire my two 2S packs in parallel. I only have one 2S balancing port (and adaptor) on (and for) my charger. This means i can only have one pack balanced at a time when charging. I could charge them one at a time, but that means i would have to make a parallel harness for them, and i dont have enough plugs to do that (using bullet plugs, not deans). Could i still hardwire both packs in parallel? and only balance one pack while charging? (i would balance the other one on the next charge, and so on)

im not too good with words, so here a pic to help explain it a little better.

the one on the left is what i was planning to do, but if both packs NEED to be balanced while charging, then i would have to make a harness like the one on the right so i can seperate them....the only problem is i dont have enough plugs to do this....i can buy more, but only if its absolutely necessary.

what should i do?

[Doby]

Does your charger have a 4S plug? If so you could make a harness and wire them in series and your charger would see it as a single 4S pack and balance each cell. I just made up 2 of these for my Triton chargers and they work well.

[Doby]

http://monster.traxxas.com/showthread.php?t=460288

Check this out.

[saleens7]

Does your charger have a 4S plug? If so you could make a harness and wire them in series and your charger would see it as a single 4S pack and balance each cell. I just made up 2 of these for my Triton chargers and they work well.

it does have a 4S plug......so i could do that....but that means i would need to make both a series and parallel harness....as well as take two 2S plugs and wire them into a 4S plug, like in the link on your second post...I could do that, but it wouldnt be easy, and i would have to buy alot more plugs as well as a second 2s adaptor and then a 4S adaptor (i think)

erm....maybe i could just make a parallel harness, but charge them one at a time....once their back in the harness theyll balance their charge between eachother right? (i would think thats how it works, right?...sorry, im not expert in the feild of batteries...heck im not an expert in any feild really )

EDIT: was just on the phone with Pat from rc lipos....he suggest making both a series and parallel harness, as well as making a 2s to 4S balancing harness like the one in the link Doby posted so i can charge and balance it as it it were a 4S pack...but he also said it would be OK to charge and balance them individually for now and just make a parallel harness for now....I have just enough plugs to make a parallel harness (thanks Diego for those extra ones ), so ill go ahead and do that....although charging will be a bit odd, as the only charge adator i can use right now that would work with the bullet plugs would be the alligator clips....atleast until i can make a series harness...