Duratrax ICE charger with Lipo's...thoughts?

[adauphin]

Getting back into the elec RC craze and I'm currently researching crawlers to be used with Lipo's. I have an ICE charger (DTXP4170) and I'm curious to see who has used these with the higher capacity Lipo's....<3000 mAh. Should I keep it or upgrade?

For small heli batteries it's great, but never used it on larger batts.

[GLwagon]

Ice Charger will do up to 4s at near 120watts.
The downfall is the lack of balancer.
If you use an external balancer such as a "Astroflight Blinky" or similar it will be good.
The Ice is a solid charger except for the back button after 10 years.
You can dial the generic settings to 9990mAh, and adjust the amperage to what ever you like.
It slows down quickly after it reaches 4.2v per cell, but is not foolproof.
I stopped using my Ice's due to going to 5s+ & needing more channels of charging.
I still have them as backups.
They are worth less than $50 used but are a solid charger.
I would not buy one new, it is a dated design.

[Hydrocarbon92]

Lipo balance isn't required as long as you don't try to extract 100% out of the battery. An external lipo buzzer set to 3.6-3.7v would suffice. Getting a balancer or balance charger would obviously be better.

If you already have a power supply, you could probably sell the Duratrax and get an ISDT charger 200W or 300W charger for the same price. You could also get a Turnigy Reaktor 250W for that price or 2x B6 chargers. I nabbed a 500W ISDT for $55 during the sale they had last month, it's pretty advanced.

[whitrzac]

Originally Posted by Hydrocarbon92

Lipo balance isn't required as long as you don't try to extract 100% out of the battery. An external lipo buzzer set to 3.6-3.7v would suffice. Getting a balancer or balance charger would obviously be better.

If you already have a power supply, you could probably sell the Duratrax and get an ISDT charger 200W or 300W charger for the same price. You could also get a Turnigy Reaktor 250W for that price or 2x B6 chargers. I nabbed a 500W ISDT for $55 during the sale they had last month, it's pretty advanced.

A way to properly balance a battery is a requirement when dealing with lipos. Anything less is asking for a house fire.

An external balance with individual cell readouts is under $10. If you can't afford that, you can't afford to run lipos.

[E. Bryant]

Originally Posted by GLwagon

Ice Charger will do up to 4s at near 120watts.
The downfall is the lack of balancer.
If you use an external balancer such as a "Astroflight Blinky" or similar it will be good.
The Ice is a solid charger except for the back button after 10 years.

Agreed with all of this I've got a iCharger 410 at home, but I don't want to lug that thing around with me into the field, so I keep around my old ICE for that task. I also use a Blinky, and while it won't fix a pack that is way out of balance, that shouldn't be a concern for an afternoon of running around a crawler (if it becomes a problem, then the pack is being pushed too hard or it's time to get a new pack).

[Hydrocarbon92]

Originally Posted by whitrzac

A way to properly balance a battery is a requirement when dealing with lipos. Anything less is asking for a house fire.

If your battery is in good health, each cell will naturally charge & discharge equally. Chemical batteries & state of charge is simply a matter of internal resistance & applied voltage - you'd know about internal resistance if you dealt with racing NiCd's. If one cell has twice the internal resistance, it will obviously charge slower. The other cells then "take up the slack", ending in a higher than average charge per cell.

If you charge to an average 4.1v/cell and discharge down to 3.7v (60-70% capacity), even a really bad cell would keep min & max per cell w/in safe levels. The main reason for them is because lipo's 10 yrs ago had far more variation per cell, more than even bargain-basement cheapos you find today.

As indicated by that charger's design, balancing was not even standard practice back "in the old days". Most higher-end chargers also have a fast-charge feature, where it charges at full power til ~90% capacity then just stops - no reduced amps charge, no attempt at the final balance. This is safe since only horrible 2S or 3S packs would see >4.2v per cell, and presumes you'll occasionally check your packs after a full discharge.

IMO it's important to understand lipo's and their charge/discharge characteristics due to their potential danger. I'd feel safer having an expert attempt a non-balance charge in my house than a novice plug their abused Venom into a cheapo LED-indicator-only charger.

My "would obviously be better" remark was an attempt at brevity, as the full explanation is lengthy.

[whitrzac]

And how would you know that a cell is FUBAR unless you had some sort of readout/balance capable device? I had a cell die <6 month old battery a few weeks ago. 2 were ~3.8 the other was 1.1v. No external warning, no physical damage, just dead.

I started racing in the mid 00s, I never actually race with nimh that I can remember, I was using airplane batteries. They still had balance taps on them. You have to go back into the late 90s to find packs with no balance taps...

Information is power, ignorance leads to housefires.