New AMA Rumor-Lipo's

Well, the good news is...the balancing circuit is dirt cheap and doesn't weigh hardly anything. And it's probably a good idea. Built in safety circuits are why you never hear of laptops or cell phones bursting in flames. Granted, you don't push your laptop to the limits and I still think hard discharge is probably the reason most packs go poof when charged.

As long as the AMA will grandfather existing packs and the Mfgs don't have to pay extortion money to FMA, it really is probably not that bad of an idea.

The reason I even say that is.... I have a lot of Tanic packs with the balancing taps on them. After the Tulsa and Texarkana ProBros, where they got quite a bit of use, I decided to break down and do a cell-by-cell charge. And a few of them were a little out of balance, and took in a little more or less charge than other cells in the pack. Unchecked, over time, this is a bad thing. Not just from a safety standpoint, but it shortens the life of some pretty expensive packs. Downside?? It takes 3 hrs + to charge a pack this way. I think the safety charging circuit is designed to balance as you charge so you could balance and charge in the regular hour.

And that is a good thing, I would just have hoped the Mfgs would have taken it upon themselves before the AMA stepped in.

Cell taps are a good idea. It makes it real easy to balance a pack. Personally, I don't want a circuit on there at all times. I would rather keep track of individual cell voltage myself. A circuit that stayed with the charger, and pluged into the taps would be more acceptable.

rik756 I agree to a certain extent. Some people have intentionally stabbed shot (with a pelet gun) and mangled packs and had nothing happen, but I have heard of one guy trying to poke a hole in a damaged cell, trying to neutralize it before disposing of it, and it burst on him. They are a little unconsistant.

I have personally had cells puff up(but not burst) because of a small hole that caused a loss of vacume, short circuit in a crash, and being stored to long at a full charge.

I think the biggest cause of violent explosions is human error on the charge settings, followed by physical cell damage(the unconsistant thing). My charger has a nice feature to prevent charging at the wrong cell count, unless the user is really insistant on doing it. It will check the cell count itself, and then you have to confirm before it will start charging.

I think there should be a better warning than the DB rant, written by people who know what they are doing, before they resort to any kind of ban. It should include things like checking the individual cells voltages in your packs, periodic balancing by charging each cell individually, inspecting your pack for swollen cells(this happens well before a fire in a pack that is out of balance because of hard use), proper disposal of damaged cells/ packs(not even sure what that is my self. all mine are stored in a metal tool box), and of course, in big bold letters, CHARGE AT THE CORRECT CELL COUNT