How long should a 4S 5000mAh LiPo take to balance charge?

[King Mustard]

I am charging my first battery.

I have a SkyRC S65 charger and entered the correct details in.

So far, it has been running for 65 minutes.

Does that sound about right?

 

EDIT: Funnily enough, the charger sounded a chime around the 68-minute mark to say it had finished. Now that it has finished, I presume it would technically be safe to leave like this? (for example, if I go downstairs for an hour or so)

Edited October 8 by King Mustard

[Stormbringer]

err no if its finished charging i would disconnect it fore going downstairs 

[King Mustard]

Just now, Stormbringer said:

err no if its finished charging i would disconnect it fore going downstairs 

As I said, it had played a chime and had finished.

[wombat]

As @Stormbringer said, once it's charged disconnect it and put it in your safe storage container, such as a metal ammo can with the seal removed. Also, unless you are going to use it soon it should be storage charged, then balance charged just before you want to use it 

[King Mustard]

Just now, wombat said:

As @Stormbringer said, once it's charged disconnect it and put it in your safe storage container, such as a metal ammo can with the seal removed. Also, unless you are going to use it soon it should be storage charged, then balance charged just before you want to use it 

Damn.

 

In that case, even though I just fully charged it, I had better discharge it using the S65.

 

LiPo batteries are a ball ache, aren't they?

[wombat]

Once you get into them they aren't too bad to look after. If you now want to storage charge it it will take quite a few hours to get to storage charge from balance charged, quicker to storage charge them from discharged. There are several good guides on YouTube about lipo battery care

[King Mustard]

Using the S65, do I need to Discharge them then pop them into Storage mode, or just pop them into Storage mode?

[Lone-wolf]

I would leave it charged but use it in your rc car in the next few days or at weekend, leaving a lipo charged for 3-6 days wont hurt just store it safely

[Yrkoon]

1 hour ago, King Mustard said:

Using the S65, do I need to Discharge them then pop them into Storage mode, or just pop them into Storage mode?

never fully discharge a lipo as well 🙂

[Yrkoon]

storage mode will charge the battery up to reach storage voltage and will discharge the battery down to that level as well, the chargers take ages if u try to storage mode a fully charged one, i tend to give a battery a wee blast in a rc car to get the battery down, if i charged one and not gonna use it then i do storage mode after whacking it in a car for a wee bit 🙂

Edited October 8 by Yrkoon

[Partydaz]

If your going use the rc car to get the lipo down to storage voltage levels 3.8v. I use these voltage checkers and stick them on the lipo and drive the car about till I hear the alarm go off beeping its head off, It helps to speed up the process instead of you keep taking the lipo off and pluging back into the charger to check it 😑. When it hits 3.8v you can stick it in your charger and let it storage charge it for you  😃 

 

you can set these little things to most voltages you need to monitor on a lipo.

 

VOKTTA 2PCS 1-8s Lipo Battery Voltage Tester Monitor Low Voltage Buzzer Alarm Voltage Checker with LED Indicator for Lipo/Li-ion/LiMn/Li-Fe battery : Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

Edited October 9 by Partydaz

[Gaz!]

Me personally,

 

leave them fully charged a maximum of a week, then storage charge them to 3.8v and stored safely.

 

if you follow the rules with charging/storage/discharging the a Li-po battery is no more unsafe than a Nimh battery, ive seen one of those vent and by the time it had done, the car was a puddle of melted plastic.

 

i would also recommend always charging at 1c so a 5000mah lipo would be 5amps. 

 

[Partydaz]

It might be taking a longer time because the charger you have is a 65w charger and a 4s 5000mah lipo for a safe 1c charge rate will need 84w to charge that lipo at 1c = 5A

 

Your charger is putting around 3.8A into the lipo, so the charger cannot put enough juice into the lipo so that's why its taking longer.

 

I only have my lipos to go off but generally they take anywhere between 25 -45 mins @ 1c charge rate

 

This page explains it LiPo Charger Wattage vs Amperage - max charging rates explained – Motion RC

 

WATTS = AMPS x VOLTS  this calculation can help you find a charger that can hopefully charge your lipos @ 1c if you ever wanna upgrade 🙂

[UKCD]

If your charger will run off DC as well mains then the dc option is better as the wattage is higher. Also you need to look at the discharge rate as this is mostly overlooked. A higher discharge rate will balance the battery cells quicker as all cells don’t reach peak at the same time & therefore the charger needs to discharge the higher cells in order to balance the battery. I had an 80w mains charger & a 5200 mah 4s would take 75 minutes to charge as the discharge rate of the charger was only 500ma. I now have a Neo D200 on a 12v 1000w dc power supply which has a 2000mah discharge rate & the same batteries only take 40 minutes to charge & balance now. Hope this helps. 
 

Mark