Real lipo guard

[greenman407]

I made myself an armored box to use while charging. Ill show it to you in a minute. First I found some videos about Lipos. Observe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojGaAGDVsCc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&v=ixIOEPnsgbI&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joe_TBzD49Y

From the first one I deduce the possibility of a fire resulting from water getting at your Lipo. At any rate I built this box for charging my Lipo. I made it out of just some old 3/8" flat bar. Extreme overkill I grant you but it was handy. Just cut up a few pieces on the bandsaw, tacked them together and Wallah! There are five sides to it. The back and top, bottom ,and left and right. This way if there is a fire or explosion it will be vented in one direction and contained.

[ManOwaR]

Mark, You should put that in your sub for added protection. You might need a little more foam to help with the buoyancy though lol. Is that a control valve position indicator switch I see on your desk?


Joel

[greenman407]

Yep, thats a "Bray" status switch to send a signal to the computer to show whether the cement valve is open or closed.

[greenman407]

Inside the Vislero 3200 11.1 volt Lipo

[greenman407]

My new stand alone balancer. If you look at the displayed voltages , you can see the voltage mismatch. The balancer is now balancing those voltages until they are equal. Since my last Lipo didnt last very long im trying to look at what might extend its life.

[greenman407]

The only problem with it so far is that such a difference in voltage readings as you see here is requiring a long time to balance. The numbers are improving but its been 3 hrs. so far and it looks as if it will need at least as many more. Tech support says that , thats because its a new battery. Once it has cycled a few times it wont be so far apart. We will see and report.

[greenman407]

My new Lipo weighs 4.66 ounces more than the previous one. Therefore since water weighs .5773 ounces per cubic inch, Take 4.66 and divide it by .5773 and you get about 8. Therefore it will take about 8 cubic inches of foam installed to equalize my boat to the same level of trim that I had before. Kapeesh?.........I think.

[greenman407]

The Lipo balancer is acting differently than the way I thought that it would. Instead of passing on the extra power from the two high cells to the one low cell, it is shaving down the power of the high cells to match the lower one.

[greenman407]

It took 15 hrs. to balance the battery with the mismatch in voltages that you saw above using this little balancer. With the cells now even I will top up the battery and see what we have then.

[greenman407]

Now thats what Im talking about. After balancing I put it back on the charge at 2.5 amps, way below this packs charge rate but the Max for my charger. Well, I expected that it would charge for maybe 30 sec. Nope. It took about 20 minutes before the peak charger kicked it off charge. Perhaps thats because in the balanced condition it could except a greater charge. I dont know. Now, would it require another 15 hrs. to balance this time? Nope. I plugged the balancer in and the voltages were perfect as you can see. COOL!