Help still confussed!

[Courtney]

I'm understanding everything so far except how the discharger/equalizer works. The discharger is hooked up in some models with a Deans or similar connector for stick packs. On side by side packs they can use Deans or similar if you have that connection placed onto your discharger, but more commonly I'm seeing them with bananna clips. The black is placed on the negative end of the pack and the red is placed on the positive end of the pack. Also some of the newer ones come with a rack that you place the pack still assembled into it and tighted down screws on the neg and pos of each individual cell while they are still connected together with the battery bars.

While alll the equalizers I've seen so far are a rack that you place what looks like the completely assembled back in also. This is what is confussing me. Let's number the cells 1-6 and I'll explain how I believe they are built and form my question from there. Cell one is upright with it's pos going to the neg of cell 2 with is upside down which means every odd battery has pos going north and every even battery has pos going south. So there are a total of 5 battery bars used in building one pack. When you place this pack in an equalizing tray do you unassemble the pack then re-assemble after equalizing each individual cell?

Here's my next example. Cell one discharges slower than cell two yet
cell 3 charges faster than all the rest. How dtoes an equalizer tell the difference between those cells when it cuts off at .01 or whatever you have it set at to equalize the tray. The one item that is causing me to get so confussed on how this works are those battery bars. My mind is telling me that once those bars are in place that cells 1 through 6 are a team or one unit and that a discharge from running the vehicle or even the discharger draws amperage equally from each cell through the battery bars connecting them and making them a unit. How then does an equalizer rack dishcarge cell 3 then stop, followed by cell 1 then stops followed by all the other cells cutting off at the same time leaving the pack equalized.

Thanks for any info that will help me understand this. Also just to clarify some electrical terminolagy. Would a side by side back be considered series and a stick back (which I haven't taken apart or seen for about 10 years) be considered parallel? Haven't had very much experience with electrical stuff but it will be great to show off to my grandpa and dad when I see them over Christmas using ya'lls help to understand this. I know you are begining to wonder how I can be in college and not understand this stuff but I've had zero experience with electrical other than helping my dad do telephone and fiber work during the summer.

Funny story, it won't make me feel so dumb. My first room mate at school was complaining about her phone not working(it was a cordless). I asked her if she checked the base station to make sure it was working. She said, "What's that." I told her the base station is what sends the signal to her cordless and has to be hooked up into an electrical outlet and a phone jack. She looked at me weird and said, "What's a phone jack." :D She believed the phone and power came from the electrical outlet at the same time.

[highroller]

The way most equalizing trays are made contact is made only with the cells surface even though the bars are in place. Since the doides or resistors are non polar types, it doesn't make a difference which end is pos or neg.
With bulb dischargers, or those made to discharge a pack are set to cutoff at a .90 volts per cell area. While pack may discharge to 5.40 volts some cells may go lower than .90 volts and some may be higher. The equalizing tray helps bring each cell down to the same voltage levels (that is why some bulbs on a tray may go out at different times - cells were not at the same voltage levels when pack was discharged). If cells are in good condition once you begin using an equalizing tray they should began charging closer to the same voltage and discharging to closer to the same levels.

The connectors you refer to come in different configuration and names, Tamiya is the most common, bullet or banana plug, Deans, Sermo (red/black plastic referred to a power poles or Lite Speed), and some that come with regular alligator clips.

The way we assemble pack +. - is for voltage this method adds up voltage if all cells were assembled with all pos connections, and all negative it would produce only 1.2 volts.