"balancers are just a money grab"

[lincpimp]

Well, the crawler guys do not draw their packs very hard, that is how they get away with using maxamps overpriced, overrated crap. So as long as they do not over discharge the packs, and have well matched cells (not a good chance of that with maxamps either) then they may not need a balancer.

However, having a piece of equipment that can monitor each cell during the charge, and interrupt the charge should one cell go under or over voltage is just a good idea. That will go along way to prevent lipo fires (they get real hot when you overcharge them) and damaged packs.

I bet none of the hicks over there that have done this have half a clue about lipo useage and saftey. Not that I care, just their money they are tossing out..

I think it was apogee that had some sort of info on their site that said that properly matched cells would never go out of balance. I have noticed this with my enerland cell based packs, they take little to no balancing when I use the 610i hyperion.