Oh, it could, if you left it on there till it overcharged...that's why you have to keep an eye on it the whole time.
If you had a 3.6v power supply it'd be safe enough to just leave it on there "unattended" for a few hours, but a 5V supply could seriously overcharge the cells it's attached to if not monitored and removed as soon as it gets to the point you need it at.
I doubt there's any problem with teh block other than it's cells ahve different internal resistance/capacity than the other blocks still at a higher voltage. (so it's capacity is the maximum capacity of the entire pack, which is likely noticeably, potentially significantly, less than the 80Ah it's rated for because of those cells).
joelshort said:
Yes, it's all automated.
http://buckeyestargazer.net/Pages/Equipment.php
I have 2 telescopes, one mount, 2 cameras, and support equipment. I'll be taking this equipment on an RV trip to some of the darkest skies in the USA. I need a Lifepo4 battery because they have a lot of capacity, are safer than other chemistries and can be charged quicker.
Have to admit to some equipment envy; those are some nice pictures.
I just have a cheap 4" reflector found at Goodwill (with a broken automated mount; presently using a different tripod now that's equatorial instead, but all manual and very cheaply made, also from Goodwill), and eyepieces from an even cheaper refractor and other assorted unknown sources. Works ok for the bright stuff you can see in the city anyway, but given it's just a wish-I-could-go-there-instead-of-just-looking hobby, I can't spend the kind of money you have on yours.
Regarding the battery itself, none of the below really matters because you already have a battery taht works, but if you ever go to replace it:
There are other "safe" chemistries that can be charged even faster, like LTO (lithium titanate), and some of the various LiCo, LiMn, NMC, etc types can be charged quickly (though safety would depend on brand/quality, some are a lot better than others).
I use "safe" in quotes because for the same quality-level, LiFePO4 isn't necessarily any safer than any-other-chemistry, because QC is a big part of safety, and the cheaper it is the less QC there is, and the less consistent the resulting product is, etc. It's part of why cells that started out all at the same charge level end up greatly imbalanced as they discharge, because they have different internal resistances from each other (they shouldn't), and different capacities at the same discharge and charge rates.
I'd have to say that other than buying new first-level-quality cells from known-good-QC manufacturers (different from sellers/vendors, because you can get "seconds" from a lot of them without even knowing it; at least the manufacturers usually say which they are and sell seconds cheaper), the best place I've seen (based on stuff here on the forum and some of my own experiences) to get "matched" cells is from "totalled" EVs, or otherwise from EV packs. Since the BMSs in those EVs generally are not going to allow the EV to overcharge or overdischarge the cells, and even not let them outside a very narrow range of SoC, the cells dont' really get run very hard, relative to what they *could* do, and so they're usually still very good cells by the time they're scrapped out. As long as you can use them in some of the "blocks" they already come in, they can be really easy to use, and can be easy enough to use in smaller sections if necessary (like for lower-voltage packs like yours), and just parallel them for greater capacities.