spinningmagnets said:
I already have a small RC 6S charger and 14V power supply, standard issue low-end RC stuff. Rather than balance half a 12S pack and then balance the other half...it would be nice to have one charger that can balance the entire 12S pack. Until I stumbled across this, I was saving up to buy an iCharger 308 Duo (30A, 8S X 8S). A high-amp pack could probably be charged at 10A without getting hot (we'll see), so 30A is overkill, although that would mean these chargers would not be running hot if they were designed for 30A and I was only using =/< 10A (iCharger 106 Duo?).
One key feature I noticed when I was reading about these, some older designs would require two power supplies in order to use both sides at the same time, and the newer ones seem to all be isolated, so...you only need one large power supply (lipo connection solutions dot com).
You will find balancing via a pure parallel charger a lot faster then a typical drain balance lead rc bulk charger.
I still couldn't help but theorize that the CP620 works the same way as the CB86 in that while it may be more advanced it still needs the pack to be split in half before you can use all 12 balance outputs at the same time.
As I demonstrated in this video in 2014, I created a fuse between S6 and S7 to show that its not a 12S charger like we all dreamed it to be.
As soon as I turned on the CB86 the link between S6-S7 went in an orange glow, the charger still works fully to this day, but I was probably lucky.
Carefully look for the orange glow, not a very clean video as I wasn't thinking about it all too carefully https://youtu.be/J6CU1lW9vUU
I find splitting the pack in two so the 12S pack becomes a double sized 6S pack pretty easy, in all the years of charging this way I have never forgot to do it and I have done all sorts of dumb other mistakes over the years.
I use a simple rc bullet lead plug between S6 and S7. I used to use a DC switch but I wondered if it would eventually go bad, it never failed but I did ditch the switch in favour of a plug when I upgraded my pack.
I was thinking once of the idea of using a rectangle neodymium magnet between both sections but its still probably more hazard prone than just a rc wire plug. Such an idea might work really well with the VRUZEND kit since it has those nickel/steel links, but I still plan to stick to regular rc connectors for my next pack build. This is also why I got the Una9 charger as you can get 18S pure parallel balance charging with just 1 in between link removal setup.
While I hope you are right with your hopes for the CP620 charger I highly recommend fusing with a low amp fuse your link between S6 and S7 when trying out this new charger.