Isolated Lipo Charging Station

[jflowers84]

Hi all,

Last night I became a member to a club that no one wants to be part off, I had a Nano Tech 6S 5000mAh battery vent in my garage last night. Due to precautions on my side, there was not a lot of damage to my house. However I did take out some neighboring lipo batteries and charging gear. I was bringing my flight packs for my 700E to a storage charge at only a rate of only .3 when a cell gave way.

I currently charge 6 batteries (6S 5000mAh) batteries in parallel with a Cell Pro Powerlab 6. I am looking for a better way to charges these batteries so I can minimize the collateral damage. Has any one made a charging station that will charge several batteries and isolate them from each other? How is everyone else setup to charge 6 of these big boys?


Thanks

[Gregor99]

Sorry to read that story and I'm glad that the damage was isolated. As to the question, there is electrical isolation and physical isolation. For electrically isolating packs, FMA MPA parallel charging board includes fuses on the balance leads as well as the charge leads. If one packs shorts it will not take out the others, or the charger.

Physical isolation is a litte more difficult. The short cables on batteries make it difficult to get the packs too far apart. Some common solutions include the LiPo sack, charging in an ammo box and charging in cinder block. Be careful with the ammo box. The lid acts like a scissors. If there are pack wires going out the top the lid can easliy cut them if it falls on packs. It happened to one of our club members.

There also more elaborate methods like a tube that has sand in the top. If there is enough heat the container holdingthe sand melts and dumps onto the sand. But like I said, when parallel charging, its hard to get the packs far enough apart to use these methods. You can use charging extention cables. But has its own issues with parallel charging, including contributing to cell balance issues.

In the spirit of better understanding the failure, did you have any other warning signs or indications the pack may be in trouble? Was it performing well up to that point? Had it been dropped or crashed? Was it old, new, or somewhere in between? Did you notice if the IR on the cell was higher than the others? Where the other packs damaged? Not trying to find fault. Just try to learn as much as I can about this failure in hopes lessons learned might help prevent this for myself and others.

[jflowers84]

Thanks I know of the MPA board from FMA Direct, and I am looking into getting that. I do not know if my Gen Ace batteries took a hit last night, but when I get home I will check.

I am going to have to think hard on how I want to proceed. I might just end up with each battery in its own lipo bag.

For what went wrong, I have no Idea. There where only 5 to 7 months old, never crashed, never charged at above 2c. I am trying to remember if it was puffed, but I can not recall.