My charging solution

[SeanM]

Ok guys, I'm so excited to now be able to say that I can charge six 6S packs for my 450 Pro in 23 minutes! That was from about a 30% charge, each cell was at around 3.79 prior to charging! My old Bantam would take about 30 minutes for each pack!! Now I'm using a PowerLab 6 powered off of a 47A 12V 575w PSU (thanks feathermerchantrc.com!!!!!), two Voltz 1300mah, two Align 1100mah, and two GensAce 1200mah packs... With 12V only for power, this setup is able to crank out 430w of power... that's 18 amps with 6S! I could have made the charge time even less if I reduced the balance accuracy. Right now it's balancing at C/20, which appears to be far more accurate than my previous charger (Bantam BC6DX).

Anyway, I thought that I should spread the word since this type of setup doesn't appear to be well known, unless you're in the LiPo charger support forum a lot. I just so happened to run across the feathermerchantrc offer, which saved me a butt load of cash on the power supply. He even offers a 24v setup for $110, plug and play even! An equivalent hobby PSU would cost around $500. I plan to upgrade to 24v down the road, but not until I have more 5C packs... The PL6 would be able to output around 800w at that voltage.

After doing a little more research, I came across the MPA Safe Parallel balance adapter. It basically is a great way of protecting yourself from costly mistakes, which is very important when you're charging in parallel. There is a lot of other details that you need to know before you start charging this way, but it's easy to figure out. This setup even allows you to charge different capacity packs, as long as they're the same cell count! Everything stays nicely balanced too, which I was a little unsure about.

I just wanted to spread the word about this type of setup.. I don't know about everyone else, but I don't think it's a well known option... yet.

[-kenny-]

Cool setup. I have the same but with two of those power supplies in series.
The pl6 is a great quality charger. Very fast and accurate. Especially if you're coming from a crappy charger, just like me
Used to take around 90 minutes for 1 6s 5000mah lipo. Now i charge 4 under 30 minutes

[SeanM]

That's what I want to do eventually, but just one of these is plenty for my needs currently. It's just a matter of time though.

[Mike2112]

Originally Posted by SeanM

After doing a little more research, I came across the MPA Safe Parallel balance adapter. It basically is a great way of protecting yourself from costly mistakes, which is very important when you're charging in parallel. There is a lot of other details that you need to know before you start charging this way, but it's easy to figure out.

What do you mean by costly mistakes? I'm looking for a new set-up like yours and have been doing research. What makes that board good? I like the cable way, cuz I had bad luck with boards in the past. Looks cool.

[SeanM]

The MPA Safe parallel balance board has 40 amp blade fuses for the mains and resettable poly-fuses for the balance connections. I am not completely familiar with the scenarios that put those features to use, but a lot of people have damaged their LiPo's and charge equipment because they were not using a parallel balance board that had fuses to protect things from too much current. For example, when you plug in a fully charged pack with several discharged packs, the fully charged pack will feed a lot of current to the other cells to equalize the voltages. This can cause a fire... But not if you have fuses to protect you.

I found a lot of info from the site below.

http://sites.google.com/site/tjinguy...allel-charging

Here's a close up of the board..

[Mike2112]

Cool, thanks.

[Viet-Lama]

[satgod]

u can go to the power setup on it and raise the limit to 60amp

I have put out 12v 60amps on my pl8 when using 1 12v supply
but your 12v supply has to be able to handle that much current
mine are 100amp supplies so i have head room

[EricD701]

This charger is on my list of things to get.

Right now I have a 5 amp charger that takes a little over 2 hours to charge six 3cells
Thanks for the info

[SeanM]

Originally Posted by satgod

u can go to the power setup on it and raise the limit to 60amp

I have put out 12v 60amps on my pl8 when using 1 12v supply
but your 12v supply has to be able to handle that much current
mine are 100amp supplies so i have head room

The PowerLab 6 is limited to 40A from the power supply. My PSU is a 47A... Having more amps is not going to get me any more power out of this because it's being limited by the voltage. Per Ohms Law, volts x amps = watts. Your PL8 is limited to about 500w at 12v. If you're trying to charge a 3S pack at 60A, you need +720w of power... How are you able to push that much current with only one 12V PSU??

[satgod]

yep i'm using a pl8 and a 100amp supply
I dont push it to 1 pack but to 5 3s packs at one time

[SeanM]

I understand all of that... but I'm trying to figure out how you can put out the full output current with only 12V being supplied.