Chargers New Parallel Charging System

[Heliman450]

Hi all,

I'm looking to build a system capable of charging my 6S batteries (8 items) in parallel. This thread started in the battery section so here's the best place to continue. The feed will be from my current system Ladegerät Graupner Polaron EX Combo rot

In addition, I'd also like to be able to charge from my car when at the field but obviously not at max rate.

All proposals will be considered.

 

[Smoggie]

Here's my setup for reference:

What you see here is:

1. The ugly cream coloured charger is my iCharger 4010 Duo.. Not the prettiest of chargers but there is none with more power. It will do 1000W/40A on each of it's two channels. Hooked up to the iCharger I have a 8 port parallel charge board and a 8 legged 'Squid' charge cable. The squid cable is easier for connecting to batteries that are permanently mounted in tandem on trays, the board is better for loose batteries.

2. The smaller charger on the left is a Turnigy Reaktor 300W/20A. I use this for any lower cell count batteries i might need to charge if the big charger is doing the heavy lifting on my big 6S batteries. I'ts also a good field charger due to it's compact size and decent 300W power.

3. The big grey boxes at the back are server power supplies. A single but massive HP ESP120 (2950W/48V) for the iCharger and dual HP DPS-600PB supplies (1150W/24V) that power the Reaktor.

4. The two small plastic boxes are full of adaptors to convert from the XT60 plugs on the parallel board/squid to the connectors I use on my bigger batteries.

What's not in the picture is my converted hairdryer that is used connected to the iCharger as a discharge resistive load for taking any charged batteries down to storage if i havent used them. The dual channel iChargers are the only chargers I know of that have the capability to do this, and it's a really useful feature as it allows large batteries to be discharged at 1000W

And yes... i have blown a fuse once or twice if i have this lot going and the tumble dryer is running too!

 

[Heliman450]

Hi Steve, apologies for the delay in responding. The weather's been great, a bit windy on Friday/Saturday and I only used up two batteries on each day. We had a very good club event on Saturday and although there was a bite in the wind we had an excellent grill for lunch.

I've done some research on getting the parts together and it seems to me that I'll probably need to assemble it pretty much from scratch. The Supra X connectors are great on my helis/batteries but I haven't seen any boards that use them. I need to do a trip to Hugo's place to get together enough Supra X connectors for my new batteries and also for the charging connections.

As I'm limited on space, I've bought a shelf unit to put batteries etc. on and have got some heavy duty connectors to put the charging side together. The balancing side will need a bit more thought as I hate masses of cables all over the place. In addition, the Graupner connection is very short and there isn't a longer option available.

Finally, I'll need to come up with a change in my battery handling just to make sure that the batteries are pretty close together before the connection is made.

 

[Heliman450]

Off the shelf, it looks like this is a good bet. I'm thinking two of these would do the business on the charging side. Works out a bit more expensive than my current concept

Modellsport.ch | Power strip with USB port | online kaufen

 

[Dennis H]

How many "Watts" does you power pacs supplies to your charging units?

Where does your Reaktor get it's power supply from?

Nice looking system.

I built or altered a roll around tool box (plastic from Home Depot) for my power pacs and my icharger 406. I also have a Venom charger that I have had for a few years. I didn't sell the Venom as I just kept it, it's a good charger, plus what I was being offered for it, it was worth it for me to keep it.

I carry around a gas generator, or if I know someone going, we decided who is bringing the generator.

Otherwise, my setup almost looks like yours.

My Power Pacs: Two 1000 watt pacs in series, total 2000 watts total.

I just roll around the tool box, around the house, or I put it in the trailer to bring to the field.

Now, do I ever max out at 2000 watts? YES, but rarely. I have a lot of 5000mAh to 8000mAh batteries. But I found it's just best to charge two on each side and it seems to balance charge quicker and more stable. I can also charge two on the Venom charger as well,for a total of 6 batteries charging at one time. That's about all you need, and on 1c, you have a charged battery in 20 minutes or so.

Playing around, I have charged 10 batteries @ 1.5c, but that's too much. It will max the Power Pacs out and shut down. I don't like that. My home wall socket, well it's maxed out, so I just like to stay away from the max charge, or breaker on the home wall socket (20 amps). Plus the 406 is also maxed out.

I'm looking to build a system capable of charging my 6S batteries (8 items) in parallel. This thread started in the battery section so here's the best place to continue. The feed will be from my current system Ladegerät Graupner Polaron EX Combo rot

I found that you have to have 8 batteries that are almost exact, Voltage, IR's, etc., and your OK. If you have just one with a low cell, it really strains the system.

I would charge 4 on each side and let it be. Probably will be the best thing for you.

Take Care,
Dennis

 

[Heliman450]

Hi Dennis, great feedback. Now that my capability is improving, I'm getting a better picture for how my flying sessions/battery needs fit together. I also thought of a generator earlier on in my RC 'Career' but as I have to go so far from the parking area to the helipad I can't see the justification. I'd also need to buy another vehicle as my wife would throw a fit using our shared Suzuki Grand Vitara

What might be useful would be a means of balancing out the batteries whilst at the field after using them. I know a chap from our flying club who's a real genius with electronic stuff. He showed me an ESC he built himself from scratch the other day........... amazing! I'll run the idea by him when we meet up on Thursday.

I intend to buy two extra 6S packs this week and then I'll have 30 mins flight time for each visit as I'm currently using each battery for 5 mins. Two more batteries will join my collection in a couple of month's time. I reckon that my oldest two will also need replacing by that time, too.

 

[Smoggie]

How many "Watts" does you power pacs supplies to your charging units?

Where does your Reaktor get it's power supply from?

Dennis,

I mentioned it in my first post. The power supply units are:

• A single HP ESP120 (2950W/48V) for the iCharger Duo
• Dual HP DPS-600PB supplies (1150W/24V) that power the Reaktor.

So a potential of over 4000W in total, though even with my chargers maxed out I can only use about 2500W

 

[Dennis H]

What might be useful would be a means of balancing out the batteries whilst at the field after using them. I know a chap from our flying club who's a real genius with electronic stuff. He showed me an ESC he built himself from scratch the other day........... amazing! I'll run the idea by him when we meet up on Thursday.

I am very interested . . .

Dennis,

I mentioned it in my first post. The power supply units are:

• A single HP ESP120 (2950W/48V) for the iCharger Duo
• Dual HP DPS-600PB supplies (1150W/24V) that power the Reaktor.

So a potential of over 4000W in total, though even with my chargers maxed out I can only use about 2500W

I am interested in anything that will get me more flight time

That is my goal.

 

[Smoggie]

Phil,

Just wondering why you would want to balance batteries in the field? Charging in the field is fair enough if you have the facilities for it but purely balancing a battery (after use) would serve no useful purpose that I can think of? You really don't even need to balance every time you charge, a battery that's in decent shape will go for many cycles without getting far out of balance. On the few occasions I can field charge I'll often do a charge cycle without balancing to save time.

Charging in the field is something I wish I could do but the field I often fly at doesn't lend itself to it because the car has to be left some distance from the actual flying site, too far to lug a generator or large deep-cycle battery.

 

[Heliman450]

Hi Steve, I had lots to think about and Dennis' post got me thinking much wider. I'm looking into what my power supply in the home means, too. It's not a ring main as per the U.K. supply, it's a star-like system with 6 x 20 amps supplying areas of our loft. Lights and sockets come off the same MCB and the one supplying my office area where I charge from is well used, so even if I switch everything else off at the time of maximum use, I'm still only limited to a 20 amps supply. It's not such a problem with smaller batteries but the bigger ones quickly add up. I currently charge at 5.5amps so 4 x 5.5 = 22 amps (or did I miss something?). My calculation says that I can only charge four together from any of my six household supplies and must reduce the amps to stay within the MCB limit.

As I use the batteries individually and in pairs, it's possible to have them all out of balance with each other (not internally). If I could balance out the batteries during my time at the field then they would be ready to go on the charger without the problem of power rushing between the batteries and exceeding the maximum rate. I was warned by the chap at my local model shop when asking him about the availability of parallel charging boards as well as reading it here as a caution.

 

[Smoggie]

Don't believe all that you hear in your local hobby shop! There is no advantage to balancing the battery before connecting to a parallel board. All that you need to be sure of is that the batteries are in a roughly similar state of charge.. Say no more than 0.2V per cell different. In practice this really just means avoid connecting an almost full battery to used batteries.

As an experiment years ago i did try connecting a fully charge battery to a used one just to see what happened, and I put am ammeter between the two. These were 3S 2200mAh batteries. I got a brief spike of 20A which quickly settled down to within the recommended max charge rate of the battery. No detectable damage occurred to either battery. So while I'd not recommend anyone do this, it doesn't have the catastrophic effect that some predict.

As for the 20A limit of you home sockets... Yes you are indeed missing something. The domestic AC supply in Switzerland is 220-240V (lets call it 230V average). 230V x 20A = 4600W. So you wont have any problem at all because your charger is only capable of drawing about 1500W.

At 1500W the charge power the PSU will only be drawing about 7A from the socket.

 

[Heliman450]

I guess I need to dig out my old physics books

 

[Heliman450]

Hi again Steve,

Thanks for the photo of your charging setup. I've ordered up two balancing boards and decided on four new batteries (ouch). I'm finding only four very limiting when I go to the field and we've been enjoying almost perfect weather for a while now. A bit of wind during my afternoon sessions but that helps with the training.

I'll take some photos of the final arrangement.

 

[Heliman450]

Hi all, still working on my system. I'm able to charge four batteries together now and will hopefully start the second four adaptors (Deans) later on today . I had to visit YouTube to see how to best fit the housing of the EC5 connectors and decided on using a small hammer and appropriately sized screw driver to drive the bullets down into the housing. It worked much better than the video showed and kept my fingers well clear of the danger zone! I've seen so many variations on how to hold the connectors that I feel the urge to buy or make something but I probably won't need it on such a large scale in future

 

[vimy]

Hello Helliman, just some ideas, have you considered the Revolectrix PL8 charger:

Revolectrix

They can be physically and electrically coupled together to configure as many individual channels as required. In the past 2 years, Revo has come up with the Bump Controller:

Revolectrix

This controller has 4 channels allowing 4 PL8's to be controlled from a single point. Batteries can have a tag put on them that uses NFC. This tells the controller what battery it is and sets up a charger without having to manually programme it.

The most powerful SMPS vs size and weight is the HP DPS 1200 FB :

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4W781SdS...NvWDLOkgT2ACLcB/s1600/2016-10-14+14.31.39.jpg

I've recently purchased two of these:

VAC1300A Multifunction Wireless Bi directional Volt Ammeter Capacity Watt Table Coulometer Free Shipping+Track Number 12003255-in Voltage Meters from Home Improvement on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group

I intend to wire them in series with the chargers so I can add current limiting on the power supplies, as well as making use of the monitoring.

 

[Heliman450]

Hi vimy, I've already got the charging side sorted for some time now.

I needed something for connecting multiple batteries to it when the time came round. I just increased to eight in total and am waiting for three more balancing connectors so that I can bring my system into service. The weather's been pretty grim for about a week so it gave me plenty of time to do the soldering for the charging side.

 

[vimy]

Hi vimy, I've already got the charging side sorted for some time now.

I needed something for connecting multiple batteries to it when the time came round. I just increased to eight in total and am waiting for three more balancing connectors so that I can bring my system into service. The weather's been pretty grim for about a week so it gave me plenty of time to do the soldering for the charging side.

Parallel charging?

MPA-XH

 

[Heliman450]

Hi vimy, I got my system a short while back. Two almost identical to Steve's at the start of the thread. I prefer to buy locally as the import situation to Switzerland negates the slightly better prices from overseas. I had to make up adaptors for my Supra X connectors, in my case Deans and EC5 as the store didn't have two of the same kind. They had enough Deans but the whole batch was damaged except for one item

The Supra X are excellent quality, however, I haven't found anyone who makes compatible items ready to go so my soldering skills have enjoyed a revival

Weather's looking good so I'll probably be charging up soon!

 

[vimy]

Hi vimy, I got my system a short while back. Two almost identical to Steve's at the start of the thread. I prefer to buy locally as the import situation to Switzerland negates the slightly better prices from overseas. I had to make up adaptors for my Supra X connectors, in my case Deans and EC5 as the store didn't have two of the same kind. They had enough Deans but the whole batch was damaged except for one item

The Supra X are excellent quality, however, I haven't found anyone who makes compatible items ready to go so my soldering skills have enjoyed a revival

Weather's looking good so I'll probably be charging up soon!

WOW! how do you damage a Deans connector? That would have taken some effort, who ever it was.

Those Supra X connectors are impressive, I particularly like the way the cover screws together. I've saved a page of images in my bookmark of RC parts.

I bought one of these to help with soldering:

http://www.rcconnector.com/product.asp?id=2098

 

[Heliman450]

It was the plastic case, not the connectors. It looked like they were packed in the factory that way as the same corner was crushed or cracked leaving only one of their stock ok.