Tppacks.com, Zippy Lipo 48v 15ah, LVC and Hyperion 1420i

[Ypedal]

Well now.. imagine this... i just got off the phone with Mr.B and aparently.. somehow... upon connection of the new pack to the controller the andersons vaporized into plasma and caught fire !!!!!!

WTF ?????

I even installed a 70 amp fuse prior to it leaving here and the fuse did not pop, he swears the polarity was right...

Having him bring the bike and pack back here tomorrow for further investigation but i'm at a totall loss to explain what the hell happened... i have connected 1000's of times various anderson assemblies from 12 to 100v and have NEVER had this happen... i've had them stick and spot weld themselves a few times but a few wiggles and they snap in place but never any fireworks... ever...

[Ypedal]

Say hello to Mr. Crispy !

[Ypedal]

After investigating the remains i determine that it was an accident on the new guy's part !

Impossible to tell via the tips of the andersons, they are gonners, but the box ends of the powerpoles are still there and i can tell that with male sides facing up on both ends, it would be impossible to make a proper connection, so they were plugged in reverse polarity !!!

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I cut the cables back and re-crimped fresh andersons, checked pack voltage at 50.2 volts, good... Then hooked it up to the controller and it powered on as expected, no fireworks this time !!.. and all is still working correctly !

I would have expected the controller to smoke but it did not !!! Phew !

[liveforphysics]

Newbs can wreck anything in a split second. lol My intern smoked a giant SB120 Anderson connector like that on a perfectly made pack I gave him to test. Connected it backwards. lol

You did an outstandingly nice job on the pack my friend.

[nicobie]

I thought it was impossible to plug in Andersons wrong? Did he change the way they were hooked together? I'm sticking to HX60s and quality bullets.

[Ypedal]

I tested the pack on my bikes before handing it over, he was using a few of my spare packs i lent him while working on his so he was already familiar with Andersons.... Howerver.. his bike had the poles reversed from my bikes and he did not pay attention to polarity when hooking it up at 11pm at night in his kitchen.....

[AussieJester]

Haha, I bet it it woke him up quick smart though YPedal Man! All Drousy, about ready for bed likely one or two wines later lol..then ZAP! Scares the beejesus out of you when your half expecting it, could only imagine the shock when your not....

Good to see no Penang damage to anything else

KiM

[knoxie]

Super job on the pack buddy (for a blind man ) but am amazed the controller survived that! flipping amazing! the andersons acted as a fuse there and I know what it is to make a connection mistake too, did that when I first built my pack, got distracted by a phone call, came back and vaporized all my balance wires splitting my brand new batteries and soldering new balance leads kinda has made me pay 100% attention when changing or modifying the pack.

[Ryank]

....maybe we should cover just exactly what it is that is wrong in that picture Mr Ypedal(?) Just for the newbies here and in the future......NOT for me...
Becasue I'm sure some of the less-experienced people might look at that photo (red wires/red connectors & black wrires/black connectors-facing eachother) and think that is oaky..!!
Funny, I bet some body (right now) has a garage full of great batteries/contorllers that are all blown up and...... I still can't figure out why???

Thank you,

Ryan

[Ypedal]

Good point.

If you look at the picture below, see how the Male/Female dove-tails on the blocks can only fit a certain way and plug Red-Red and Black-Black if those dove-tails are oriented properly.

From the residue in the picture above, I can confirm that they were plugged reverse polarity by looking not at the tips, but at the ends of the blocks.

[aaronski]

So, the burnt bits were wired red-red and. Black-black when pluggIng in controller ? Weird cuz that's how I have it...

[Ypedal]

No actually.. It would have been impossible to plug in properly.. From the leftovers..

[aaronski]

Ah! I see now. You have them lined up, but couldn't plug em in like that. You didn't have his bike/controller when testing.

[visuthdy]

Hi Ypedal,
Sorry to jack your thread, but I was wonder if you can help me with my problem. I've read many of you posts on here and your website and you are very knowledgeable on lipos. I had PM you regarding having the same setup but with 12S2P and that I was not able to turn the motor with my controller. Now, I have another serious issue. I don't know what has happened, but it seems that all my battery is dead now. A couple of weeks ago, I was able to to connect the 12S2P that output 45V. I had left the battery connected and now all four of my 6S packs are swelled up and not producing any voltage, not even powering up the CA. I tried even disconnecting everything and plugging into a battery medic and it doesn't power it either. I've tried charging in 12S2P and 6S separately but it was not able to charge, it state "no control" and when it's doing a battery check, it only see one cell.

Any insight or suggestion to get the battery back to normal? Attached are pictures of my set up and thanks in advanced.

[Ypedal]

I"m either looking at this wrong or something is really wrong with the way you have the main power wires S and P ' ed.

If you seperated all the packs and every cell from every pack is at 0v, and puffed up.... those packs are toast.. dont even try to revive them.. take them outside and put them some place safe ( like in a clay pot or in a metal box.... )

not cool.. no fun.. but no shit.. you do have to figure out what's wrong before trying again..

take a few more pictures and angles of how you have this hooked up please so we can see the other side of the packs..

[visuthdy]

I'm pretty confident that it's wired connected correctly. I followed the tppacks.com connection diagram example for 12S2P as described.
I guess my batteries are toasted . I read another member's thread under "battery technology" topic that happened the exact same way.
I saw this dead lipo recovery method on youtube http://youtu.be/DrpRn2Os-fA Have you ever tried it?

[Ypedal]

Do not follow that guy's advice..... seriously man..

*(i only watched half of that video, and i know what he's doing will result in the charger allowing lipo mode by bumping up the voltage in nimh mode.. ) he's got a tiny pack and only 2 cells.. your MUCH LARGER PACK = much bigger boom if shit goes wrong during the process.. and it very likely can. ( the guy was using an ESD bag as a lipo safety bag lmao.. had no clue what nimh or pb stands for .. and he's giving advice on lipo handling. )

If your packs are visibly puffed and at 0v, sorry man but it's over.. get new packs but dont hook it all up until you find what caused this failure.

- was the pack left connected to the controller ?

- Was the e-brake signal every hooked up at any point in time? Could you have plugged it in wrong at any point in time in your quest to make the system work ?

more details on what has happened are needed.

and i'd still like clearer pictures of how you have the main power leads hooked up..

[amberwolf]

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to to connect the 12S2P that output 45V. I had left the battery connected and now all four of my 6S packs are swelled up and not producing any voltage, not even powering up the CA.

Question: were they only at 45V at full charge? Because that sounds pretty low, nearly discharged (at best about half full?) for 12S LiPo, at only about 3.75V/cell. Normally full charge would be closer to 49.2V (4.1V/cell) up to 50.4V (4.2V/cell).

If they were left connected to the controller and CA, when that low a charge state, it probably would not take very long for them to discharge down to the "cliff" state, and be taken all the way down to nothing from there.

Assume 150mA (possibly a lot more) used by a controller in idle, plus the CA. Each hour, that's 150mAh. 10 hours would be 1.5Ah, a whole day would be 3.6Ah, which is probably a lot more than they had left in them if they were at 45V to start with.

Assuming normal full capacity of 10Ah at full charge of 4.2V/cell, you would only have a bit less than 3 days of idle power, even then, at 150mAh idle consumption.

So there might not actually be anything "wrong" other than not having enough power to be able to just leave them connected like that for any length of time.

[visuthdy]

Ypedal,
Yes, the pack was left connected to the controller. The e-brake signal was never hooked up. Pics is clearer detail of how the power leeds are hookup up.

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amberwolf,
No, the battery pack was never fully charged. In fact, I have never charged it since I received it from hobby king. I just hook up the batteries to test my electronics RC throttle/castle creation controller, and astro motor. I could not get the motor to turn so I just left everything connected and didn't get back to it until a few days later. Now, I know that was a huge mistake on my part to have everything connected. I just need to remember to disconnect the battery when not in the future.

[olemetry]

Sorry for my ignorance, but what is an "electronics RC throttle/castle creation controller, and astro motor"? It sounds awesome!

[Ypedal]

Sorry for my ignorance, but what is an "electronics RC throttle/castle creation controller, and astro motor"? It sounds awesome!

See pages 1, 2, 3 and 4

http://ypedal.com/RC/RC.htm
http://ypedal.com/RC/RC2.htm
http://ypedal.com/RC/RC3.htm
http://ypedal.com/RC/RC4.htm

[pdf]

I'm pretty confident that it's wired connected correctly. I followed the tppacks.com connection diagram example for 12S2P as described.
I guess my batteries are toasted . I read another member's thread under "battery technology" topic that happened the exact same way.
I saw this dead lipo recovery method on youtube http://youtu.be/DrpRn2Os-fA Have you ever tried it?

I tried this several months ago actually, without seeing the video. I left a low Ahr pack on the controller with the soft switch on the controller off. I would like to poll people to find out how much power their controllers pull when they are connected to the battery but switched "off". Anyway, I had used the pack and left it connected for a couple of weeks and the pack was dead. I connected the packs one at a time in, I think NiCd mode or some mode that allowed you to charge without the charger checking the pack voltage for low voltage. IThe plan was to get it up to the point where it could be charged in LiPo mode properlyl. Nothing blew up, nothing puffed significantly, and eventually the pack did come back to the point I could use the LiPo mode. However, there was a dead cell (see more below) that would not come back. I don't see any serious problem with this but DO IT OUTSIDE!!!! and don't be stupid. Get away from anything flammable and have a bucket of sand ready. Although I'd bet nothing will happen. After charging a little at a time, check the individual cell voltages. And only try one pack at a time.

When I looked at the cell voltages (I had three 6s packs in series on the bike) after finally getting it up to a voltage that I could use the LiPo mode with, the same cell (the number 2 cell as numbered by the charger) was dead in each pack and the other cells seemed to be OK; the pack voltages were low because one cell was dead in each pack. I made a pretty significant attempt to take the packs apart and replace the bad cell in two of the packs with a good cell from the other one. In short, it is harder than you think. It is pretty tricky to get a pouch out of a pack with the tabs intact. If I wanted to do it again, I would order a new cell (found out later you could do this) and just carefully cut out the bad cell and replace it with the new one in each pack. Although I have to say, although I am a pretty persistent do-it-yourselfer, in the end it just wasn't worth it. Depends on the value of your time. You also need a pretty large soldering iron to generate enough heat; there is a lot of solder on the battery tabs.

So you can go ahead and try it OUTSIDE on the ground away from anything that burns, but I don't think it will work. Look at the individual cell voltages. If one is zero, I think the chances of recovering it are very poor. Either replace the bad cell or get a new pack, that would be my advice, although I don't think it will hurt as long as you aren't careless about it.

[visuthdy]

Hi Ypedal,
I just purchased some four new lipo from HobbyKing. They are the Tunigy 6S 5000mah 20C batteries. I want to make sure that I don't screw up the batteries this time. Can you share your hyperion EOS1420i charger configuration set up? I'm using a Meanwell 24V power supply. I know yours is pack is different. I'm more worried about the "charge current" and "batt capacity" setting. Any insight you may have would be great. I tried searching in the battery technology but I was not to fine the exact answer.

Batt Type = Lipo
Batt volts = 22.2 Vpack (6S) or 12S for 12S2P bulk?
Batt Capacity = 5000 mAh (6S) or 10000? for 12S2P bulking?
Charge Current = ?
Temp Cutoff =
Safety Timer =
TCS Capacity = 95%
TCS End Action = Stop
TVC =
Discharge Amps =
Discharge Volts =