anybody bought pack from Cyclone-tw?

I bought 2 x 24V 10Ah DIY packs that I had to assemble myself as a 48V 10Ah. They changed the dual BMS and chargers to a single 48V. Came with all the copper, nuts, wiring etc. These DIY are no longer advertised on their site.
I paid $600 USD plus $170 postage - several months ago.
They would not budge on postage which I thought was a bit expensive. Delivery took about 3.5 weeks.

Pacos' response to emails (sales@cyclone-tw.com) was almost immediate and friendly.

I'm sure they would do a 72V custom pack, their BMS can be run in series.

The battery is/was good for the 60A I needed, overkill on my $600 chinese scooter. I recently damaged the BMS (my fault, those threaded battery ends need insulation) so I'm thinking I'll wait for the ggoodrum BMS.

Greg
 
what is damaged on your BMS? maybe it can be fixed easily. picture?

if you haven't done much electronic assembly the open source BMS will be a soldering challenge for most people and you may seek to practice on your current BMS.

i am hoping there will be a new thread start on the build pictures of the BMS itself. everybody is gonna have a 'good' way to layout and install parts in order and with confidence that they are going where they should. so that really has to be people showing pictures during the build. maybe paco has another bad board you could use to swap parts from, but i would expect they want to sell a functional unit to avoid liability. except it is not in the US, so maybe they can be more reasonable. BOL, dennis
 
Yep, I bought a 48v 10 ah pack with charger. Well it looked like it was dropped in shipping no voltage out and a tiny dent in each of the cells up by the rim of each one. Turns out one cell was bad 0 volts which made the BMS shut the whole thing off. He sent a new cell in a week and everything worked ok. Occasionally the BMS electronics would shut it down for no reason (maybe too much current?). After about 20 cycles of using it I plugged it into the controller one day and pop sparks shot out of the BMS and it was done. I can't see any physical damage, it appeared the sparks shot out of the epoxy coated/potted module on it. When it worked, the BMS also seemed to shut it down prematuraly at the end of a long ride even though the cells were only at 3.2 volts or so and it would only be "reset" when i hooked the charger up to the pack when that happened.
The cells are all OK, the BMS electronics are toast, although one cell seems to always be a little lower than the others.
I'm waiting for GGoodrum's BMS board to be finished to use it.
They use horrible packing and shipping, they just throw it in a used box with some bubble wrap.
They took about 3 weeks to get it here too, I had to email him and ask him what the status was and only then did it ship.
So I would only buy it from them to get the cells the BMS electronics are junk and its a big risk to get them shipped without damage. The only reason I purchased them from Cyclone was that it was easy (using paypal) and the price on the pack was cheap (except for the shipping).
 
I have placed three orders with Paco for batteries and parts, 2 -24v and 1 36v battery. Each order was delivered within 2 weeks of my order date. the quoted shipping was a bit high, but on all my orders I had added a few extra cells or extra motor and there was no extra shipping added so that helped out a bit. All parcels were delivered in good shape and no damage, so the packing to me seemed good. They seem to be fine for my 650 watt cyclone motor.
 
it looks like a lifebatt cells and bms.
 
ejonesss said:
it looks like a lifebatt cells and bms.

Its the same cells from PSI that cyclone and lifebatt use, but the cyclone BMS is different and a lot more unreliable compared to what I have seen of the Lifebatt BMS.
I wish i had a lifebatt BMS to replace the cyclone bms with.
 
velias said:
ejonesss said:
it looks like a lifebatt cells and bms.

Its the same cells from PSI that cyclone and lifebatt use, but the cyclone BMS is different and a lot more unreliable compared to what I have seen of the Lifebatt BMS.
I wish i had a lifebatt BMS to replace the cyclone bms with.

The lifebatt/PSI bms does not provide LVC, it only provides a warning buzzer ( and imo that's enough as long as you play smart.. )

I have been testing various Lithium packs, sans-bms, and to be honest, i have found that quality cells remain very well ballanced on their own, the ballancing feature on my LiMn packs was more problems than it was worth because it would take the whole pack down to the voltage of the lowest cell ( one cell out of 10 would drop to 4.14v, so the 9 others that hold 4.2 get drained to match the lowest of the bunch, )

I do not advocate running without a BMS, but if you avoid 100 % DOD over discharge is not a big deal as long as you insure a full charge.
 
you could modify the lifebatt/psi bms by adding a relay driver in place of the buzzer (depending on the buzzer used (some buzzers have the electronics self contained in the package others are just a speaker)) then connect a relay to cut off the power.


Ypedal said:
velias said:
ejonesss said:
it looks like a lifebatt cells and bms.

Its the same cells from PSI that cyclone and lifebatt use, but the cyclone BMS is different and a lot more unreliable compared to what I have seen of the Lifebatt BMS.
I wish i had a lifebatt BMS to replace the cyclone bms with.

The lifebatt/PSI bms does not provide LVC, it only provides a warning buzzer ( and imo that's enough as long as you play smart.. )

I have been testing various Lithium packs, sans-bms, and to be honest, i have found that quality cells remain very well ballanced on their own, the ballancing feature on my LiMn packs was more problems than it was worth because it would take the whole pack down to the voltage of the lowest cell ( one cell out of 10 would drop to 4.14v, so the 9 others that hold 4.2 get drained to match the lowest of the bunch, )

I do not advocate running without a BMS, but if you avoid 100 % DOD over discharge is not a big deal as long as you insure a full charge.
 
I ordered a 1000watt motor kit from cyclone. The Packaging job was TERRIBLE. Everything chucked in an overly large box with a scrap of bubble wrapped thrown in afterwards. During transit everything rattled around colliding with each other. The motor arrived with a big dent in it.
Considering the exorbident postage cost, i would have expected the kit to arrive in a velvet lined chest.

Based on this, id be ordering PSI cells directly from PSI. This would be cheaper and safer based Ypedal's experience.
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6028

Other things that stand out from my bad experience with Cyclone-tw.com;
-The alluminium motor mount didnt fit the BCD of the motor dowls, (it was designed for the 360W>500W series) and had so many mistakes in it i wouldnt be surprised if it had been machined by an Orangutan.

-The freewheel crank arm had been placed in a bench vice without any protection whilst they torqued down the freewheel at the factory. This resulted in peen marks all over it where the vice grip compressed into it. The assembler really didnt give a $#!T...

-The crappy plastic chainguard was broken on arrival, It also couldnt be used on the dual chainwheel 1000watt design as the screw heads that mount it would foul on the chain that couples with the smaller chainwheel. How can such a fatal design flaw be put into mass production??

-The grease inside the crank freewheel is pumped out with rotation. So the bearings wear out in short time. A simple rubber seal would fix this.

They say its the Asian way of doing business....... low cost, low quality, low care, high turnover.... The consumer complaints either are never voiced, never reach the factory or are simply ignored.

They have the western world trained to be expectant of a short lived throw away product because we dont know any better.

The problem is they have a monopoly on selling high powered Bottom Bracket drive kits at a reasonable price. Id happily pay a bit more for better quality control, but not Thousands of dollars for a german made 250W BB kit that wont push me past 20mph.
 
I ordered a BMS (60 volt) and a lead acid balancer 60 volt.

We agreed the lead acid balancer would ship later

got the bms for TS cells, it was a 16 and a 8 unit bolted together for 20 cells

hooked it all up and it did something....

did extensive testing and found some cells were moving amps to balance and other weren't, isolated it to one board was balancing the other wasnt, the boards were tied together via two reed relays.

These relays also provided the low and high volt cutout I requested for charger and ebrake.

Found that when a cell hit the ceiling the relay clicked the charger off, then right back on, this pulsing would have worn out my charger, and it allowed cells to climb way past 4.25 due to poor engineering and lack of actual testing ( the charger cutoff circuit turned off at high volts but was not inhibited from turning right back on)

The balance function only moved 0.20 amps max, so even if the charger cutout function had worked, it would have taken sometime for the high cell to drop to the point where the cell should have been re-enabled to allow the charger to turn back on,.

Paco was always nice, in the end he said ship it back and we'll replace it, instead I said make another and make sure it works, and I'll pay half for uit and keep the bad one since he agreed the bad one was defective (this only made sense due to the cost of shipping back and forth).

Keep in mind, I paid up front for the BMS I got and the acid balancer I do not have, and stated I would pay for the replacement unit when it was ready and the acid balancer and it could ship together.

That was about a month ago, I have not heard from Paco since, to be fair, I have not pinged him either but perhaps I should.

In the end however, his BMS for TS cells is not going to move more than 0.20 amps which is going to fall well short of what is required, which is why I have created a single cell 10 amp capable unit that bolts direct to the cell itself without increasing the height and have paid little attention to Paco's product as mine has tested on two cells and does all I need, stops the bike on low voltage, stops the charger on high voltage, and can dissipate up to 10 amps at the cell.

My unit is going into proto production and I expect it to be road testing in 4 weeks or less, and I have found two companies in CA that will make the boards and populate them and cut the mini boards out of the main production boards.

Even if I had a BMS, I would add these as a backup, they are N-Scalable and can be used from 1 to infinity cells so no wasted money overbuying BMS units that are tied together in funky ways to make them work.

Would I buy from Paco again ?

Probably, he did ship and I believe that if I ping him he will respond and something will happen with my order.

I am going away for a week so maybe I will cut him a break and ping him when I get back, he could learn something crucial in those 7 days that could benefit my items :)
 
boostjuice said:
They say its the Asian way of doing business....... low cost, low quality, low care, high turnover.... The consumer complaints either are never voiced, never reach the factory or are simply ignored.

They have the western world trained to be expectant of a short lived throw away product because we dont know any better.

Werds of wisdom, Lloyd. Werds of wisdom... :wink: this was true for Japanese quality once a upon a time... then they evolved! :shock:

EDIT:
boostjuice said:
we dont know any better.
Oh we KNOW better... they just count on western consumers' irresistible urge to grab anything with cheap prices, until we get the thing home for a closer inspection then read those words Made in ***** :x

SUCKERS!

BTW, what kind of poison does this kit come with? :lol:

J
 
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