Charging at high C rates
 

I'll explain my problem:

I have a Paladin L120 Pro (http://www.logicrc.com/?ItemId=O-FS-L120P&s=c:0,c:40), which is capable of 10A charge rates.

However, you have to tell the charger what capacity the battery is, and it won't let you charge at anything past 2C.

I have some Hyperion 3300 18.5V Lipos coming (courtesy of Arct1k), and they can be charged at 5C (obviously I can't quite manage 5C!).

So, I'm thinking the only purpose of telling the charger what capacity the battery is, is as a safety mechanism, so you don't charge at more than 2C.

Would it matter if I told the charger that it was a 5000mAh battery instead, so I could charge at 10A (well, about 8.4 - 9.2A with 18.5V)?

Considering that most chargers don't ask for battery capacity, I would have thought that this would be ok, but I need some second opinions really.

Thanks!

Charger needs capacity only for safety capacity cutoff, so it wont overcharge your batterys. And ofcourse to determind max charge current.
Tell the charger that you have bigger (more mAh) battery, to charge faster.

So, surely, it would need it then?

My charger gives a % charged status, I would have thought that it is just for that. Surely, it detects when each cell is fully charged by the Voltage (similar to a NiMh).

The only thing I can think of is to do what Jabe said. Except the charger may error out if it sees voltages it doesn't expect. The charger's CC/CV algorithm should prevent any problems from overcharging.

Also, that charger has a 180w power limit, so that will limit your charge current to ~8.5A (at CC/CV threshold), so you can get somewhere between 2-3C charge rate once you get the capacity thing squared away.

Lipo chargers work on the constant current, constant voltage charge method. it shouldn't matter what you set the capacity too on the charger. If it does have a safety shut off for capacity it wouldn't work so I would read the instruction sheet and pay close attention while you are doing it, but it should work just fine.

Thanks guys, 3 positive opinions from such regarded members, I'll give it a go. I'll post back here to let people know how it went (just need to get my Lipos first).

Go fool your charger, I used to do this without any issue untill finally an update to my charger's firmware comes available which allows me to config the maximum C charge rate.