Hyperion 6s problems from day 1

[maxwelltub]

Im not sure if this is the best forum for lipo discussion but I'll give it a shot. I recently bought two Hyperion 6s split packs. I received them earlier this week, and right out the box they where not balanced perfectly, but pretty close. After a number of charge and discharge cycles I can not get these things to balance.

Important information to note; these are split packs wired in series to make a 6s. (part of the new shipping regulations, it sucks big time) They come with a little Y balance connector to balance them as a 6s. One cell is a 4s and one cell is a 2s. The ends of the Y connector are identical, but they are labeled with "A" and "B" tags that correspond to the two balance leads coming out of the lipo. Because they are identical if your not paying attention you could easily switch them up, and because the batteries in the split back are not identical I'm certain bad things would happen if you did mix them up. Because the split backs have double the wiring and soldering, I was very slow and attentive to detail when hooking up the leads and soldering the two pack in series.

Ok with that said back to the issue. I am charging on a Tenergy TB6AC4, and a back up charger which is a Thunder AC6. I thought maybe it was the charger which is why I switched to the back up to see if that helped. On the charger I have got one of the batteries close to balance, ranging from 4.20 to 4.17. However it will occasionally jump around to get closer to balance or farther. For example it will be 4.20-4.19 across the board, and then a few will jump to .17 or .22
The other one is mostly around 4.20-.18 execpt the second cell which is 4.12-14. When I use my stand alone lipo tester I get higher numbers, the highest cell reading 4.23 and the lowest reading 4.17.

I am currently balancing at 2 amps, and discharging at 1 amp to try and get these things closer to 4.20 across all 6 cells. I haven't flown with them yet for obvious reasons. It seems like its slowly getting better, but we are talking hours and hours of charging and discharging over the course of the week. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Am I doing the right thing? Am I making it worse? Is there hope for these little ****ers? Thanks.

 

[kloner]

those clone chargers like that are notoriously crappy at balancing, but the numbers your throwing off are what happens when a pack has a high internal resistance, or at least one on the rise. When i went from thunder 200 watt to the icharger, my balancing was night and day different

This is why i use cheaper packs everybody else does. The hyperion are so expensive, they sit around a long time before they sell. They have a shelf life. Pretend it's milk, you want a nice fresh glass of whats around or travel a million miles and a year to get a glass poured the day you drank the earlier glass at home?

 

[maxwelltub]

Son of gun... I have been looking at the Ichargers for their higher amp charging capabilities. If I want to charge 2 lipos at once, would you recommend the icharger with a parallel board? I could use it for field charging and then balance them more precisely at my shop.I just ordered some Glaciers earlier this week, which I have heard great things about. They are not the cheapest, but they are far cheaper then some of the other top brands. Plus they are assembled in the US and seem to be flying of the shelfs. Hopefully they yield better results. Thanks for your input.

 

[Bartman]

don't buy a parallel board (a.k.a. paraboard). to get up to six packs plugged into a paraboard you've got to have long leads. it's a pain in the arse.

there are parallel harnesses that do the same thing and they're a lot easier to use.

I've got an iCharger and it works pretty well. I've also got 4 Cellpro Multi4 chargers packed into my tool box and I like the info they give but the iCharger gives a good bit as well. To charge two packs at a time I might just buy two good chargers and let them run independent of each other. Parallel charging requires the packs to have similar states of discharge which can be a hassle sometimes.

 

[kloner]

I tend to fly my packs by osd to certain levels, so in my case, it's a pretty simple task.....

heres my take on the charge distro setups, there kinda dangerous, i've had several instances when i've plugged in balance leads one pin over, or worse, backwards. When you do it smokes the board/cable. i went to an fma board, used it once to balance out 6s and it won't again, no idea what i did, but it aint a fuse. The leads usually don't even have a fuse. I burned traces in 3 of them un fused boards from screwing up...... once you spend the kinda money on em i'm at in a year, you pay alot of attention to plugging everything in perfectly everytime, but it is hard in the begining. On the fma board i'm using now i've swapped out 6 fuses in 4 seperate events. that's like every two months, but your talking to somebody charging hundreds of thousands of mah a month........ I charge almost everyday, at least every two days.

 

[maxwelltub]

Ya if I get a new charger, which seems like only a matter of time, I want it to have at least 10-20amp capabilities. If I where to charge 2 lipos in parallel, it would be for the S800 which I use with 2 identical lipos anyway. At this point 2 Ichargers and power supplies seem a bit out of my range, but long term that might be the best option. Thanks again for your inputs.

 

[WillM]

So Kloner, what is your charging rig like? Power supply? Or is it more like, 'what are your charging rigs and power supplies like'? Inquiring minds want to know...

I think I'm due for a 2nd charger and upgraded power supply.

 

[kloner]

I just use the icharger 306b with a pair of the dell server power supplies running 24 volts, 1400 watts of power. The charger pegs up to 30 amps on up to 6 packs. I fly all pairs of packs now so it is usually 4x 4s 4000 to 5300 mah at a time, it's like an hour to balance charge them out each time, something like 10-12ah

the build thread for the case is somewhere in this place.

 

[WillM]

Thanks. Nice looking case - I'll have to look your build up...

 

[JoshMaxAmps]

Alot of the problem I see as well is the mixing of separate cell counts. You would be far better off with dual 3s packs than a 2s and 4s pack. The 4s pack has much more resistance and will cause the 2s pack to discharge faster. Having either equal parts on each side or one single pack is a much better option. Do you have a balance only mode? A new charger would be ideal. There are alot of brands out there. I would look at the Watt capabilities, charge rates and features before you make a purchase however. Compare what they can do. having a good charger can help you discern issues beforehand with a pack and can also maintain said pack better than others.