Will battery sparking upon contact damage my controller?

[Transit Artist]

I'm working with a battery that doesn't have an on/off switch which sparks upon initial connection. Knowing little to nothing of electrical components this doesn't seem to have anything to protect my controller against surges. I recently changed the two pole connectors with an XT60 on this 48V. I wouldn't know if it's been happening this year prior as it is usually encased in the bike's frame obscuring sight and sound but this bike's factory controller did recently inexplicably fail and need replacement. Is this sparking safe and if not, what can I do? I don't want to fry my new Phaserunner.

 

[neptronix]

It's certainly not easy on connectors, but capacitors can probably handle it.

On my phaserunner i use a xt60 to xt90 connector so i can hook up an antispark connector and eliminate this problem.

 

[Transit Artist]

It's certainly not easy on connectors, but capacitors can probably handle it.

On my phaserunner i use a xt60 to xt90 connector so i can hook up an antispark connector and eliminate this problem.

Is an antispark connector a separate added component that you put on the XT, like the smaller plastic pieces in this image?


It's hard to decipher what I'm looking at online as components seem to vary

 

[chuyskywalker]

Yup. You need a pigtail that does XT60 on one side and XT90 on the other so you can use the XT90AS (antispark) female connector.

The connector has a resistor built in that, as you insert the plug, allows a trickle of current through to charge the caps on the controller side so they don't try to insta-charge at max amps (the spark) when the full connection gets made as the connector is fully seated.

However, that's only really applicable if you are disconnecting there and reconnecting at that junction. Given the battery pic, it looks like this is a case you can take on/off. If you are doing that, then the connection happens on the case and any xt90as you put in-between won't do anything while it's already fully seated.

If the battery has it's own power switch, turning it off while putting the battery in the cradle should avoid the spark. Then turn the battery on and away you go.

If you are only putting the battery on once in a blue moon, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[neptronix]

Yeah.. in this case, the spark is a result of the controller's capacitors being brought up to the battery's voltage.
The more powerful the battery, the bigger the spark.

Wish we had antispark connectors in the RC Lipo days.. back then you had to make one.. i had a 125v battery that was so powerful that it'd turn some 4mm connectors into plasma within a few connections/disconnections, lol.