"balancers are just a money grab"

[lincpimp]

Originally Posted by Finnster

hey hey hey.. don't bash the blinky!
Don't blame the tool, but blame the user. If you are trying to use a wrench as a hammer, expect some bent nails. I love my blinky as I know how to use it and know it will balance anything, but you don't use it to charge @ 5C to 100% on a pack you just pulled 25C from to LVC. 0.1" pins FTW. You need a smart balancer/charger in the toolbox as well.

Not using a balancer is silly and lazy. The more modern cells are much better and safer than the ones from just a short while back, but not using a balancer won't save you anything long term. IDK know why someone would pay hundreds of $ for a lipo then treat it like a duratrax NIMH. Whatever, your money, your house. g/l

Yeah, I know what a blinky can do. I would not use one during the charge as it will not interrupt the charge if necessary. And I would never balance a pack after the charge, so it is not much use. You could use it to balance a partially discharged pack if said pack is way off, but I would rather use the balancing function of my 610i, as it will show me info as well as balance the pack. So a blinky is not much use to me. Old tech, plus you should balance packs during the charge, and a blinky is not optimum for this either. I have a few stand alone balancers, but all have digital screens that show individual voltages.

Originally Posted by Arct1k

Ps crawlers do pull some amps - my berg runs dual 35t on 3s with a 7950th on 7.5v from a 1100mah battery...

Yes, some crawlers do pull amps. I remember JRH doing tests to substantiate that claim. I am guessing most of these guys that are "saving" some money are running more simple single motor setups that are not as hard on batteries. I can imagine super class rigs can pull some juice too, but nothing like a flux on 4s can...