Gryphon Hyper HV BEC Quasar - Burn out and crash

[midnightx1]

Has anyone had any problems with their Gryphon HV 75v BEC burning out?

Mine did 2 days ago during flight and with it went all 4 servos, brain & esc. I have no idea what has happened as there were no physical signs of suspicious mechanical or electrical failure after the crash. I suspect that the gryphon at some point failed and then let all 12s voltage through to the brain and to each servo and esc throttle cable, rendering all useless.

Please see the internal picture attached of the damage inside the Gryphon.

For info, the heli has been flying fine with no issues for several months, i am a sport flyer with mild 3d and i was just flying big air figure of 8's when the crash occurred. I had 4 flights previously that hour with no incidents which were actually a lot harder going aerobatically..

The heli is a standard Trex 700 dfc with the hv servos. The gryphon was connected to the 12s and output set to only 7.4v as i had seen conflicting threads before about possible overload of the bec from the hv servos.

I have emailed gryphon with this info and photo to see if they can shed light.

I would welcome anyone's thoughts on what may have occurred electronically.

Thanks
Mike

[michael503]

Sorry for your loss.

Unfortunately, when a HV BEC fails, this is typically what it does... takes everything else with it. At least judging by the posts I've read. I've never heard of one just quitting.

Anyway, the cause could have been anything. Most likely a component failure on the BEC. Although this is the first Gryphon failure Ive read about, many were reporting similar failures, with similar results from CC BECs. Usually, they would fail on connection, letting the magic smoke out of every piece of electronics on the bird when they did.. My suspicion was that the units could not handle the spikes that occur at connection. Your unit could have suffered something similar, but just held on for a bit longer. Most BECs will brown out without immediate failure if excess drain from the electronics occurs, saving the electronics, but likely crashing the heli.

personally, if I were you, and was going to fix this (its gonna be expensive), I'd ditch the regulator and get a 2100ma Life pack. Its a whole lot safer and cheaper, just a bit more inconvenient.

[midnightx1]

Thanks for your reply Michael.

I was wondering if perhaps it had just overheated as the bec was under the canopy with no real airflow. The instruction leaflet that comes with the Gryphon says that if the amps draw is more than 5A continuous then you should have an airflow over it of 5 m/s which sounds like quite a lot to me.

The crash occurred a good 2 minutes after lift off and i would have understood it better had i have been throwing it around hard and straining all the servos when it happened but i was only in straight and level flight after coming out of a corner.

If i hear back from Gryphon in South Korea i will update this thread with their comments as i am sure others with the same setup will be wondering why it has happened.

In the meantime. today i have already rebuilt it with another gryphon but am using non hv servos and will run at 6v. If i have any further issues i will do as you suggest and run from a Life battery.I also added some cooling slots through the canopy.

[michael503]

yeah, an over heat condition can cause stuff to burn out, but I'd be very much surprised if you were pulling 5A continuous, unless you had a servo failure, which I think you would have noticed before it smoked.
I would think that a BEC would have some kind of failsafe/short protection, but this one may not. When you get the new one setup, do some flights and quickly feel the BEC to see if it is hot. Warm is OK.

[Rockarruda]

I also have this BEC myself, but I am running it off of 6S and have it set to 6V for my servos..

I had been thinking about running a RX pack through the bec instead of my flight pack, so if it did go, no electrics would go with it..

[michael503]

Yeah, this sort of thing is the entire reason I just run a Life pack. No regulator, just a 15A rocker switch. Just too many instances of this for me to trust any regulator, no matter who makes it.

That said, if it works for you, more power to ya!

[aro03]

Sorry to hear your story. I have run a gryphon for a year in a 12S setup with no problems. However i now use an HV2 BEC as it is a much better quality power supply.

If you are looking for a replacement BEC then have a look at it. It is designed so that it cannot fail as an open circuit. I have also accidentally connected one in reverse polarity without damaging my other electronics.

http://www.hv2bec.com/?page_id=128
http://www.hv2bec.com/images/hv2bec_all_manual_v2.3.pdf

Mikado's testing of the BEC:
http://www.vstabi.info/en/node/1389

[midnightx1]

Originally Posted by aro03

Sorry to hear your story. I have run a gryphon for a year in a 12S setup with no problems. However i now use an HV2 BEC as it is a much better quality power supply.

If you are looking for a replacement BEC then have a look at it. It is designed so that it cannot fail as an open circuit. I have also accidentally connected one in reverse polarity without damaging my other electronics.

http://www.hv2bec.com/?page_id=128
http://www.hv2bec.com/images/hv2bec_all_manual_v2.3.pdf

Mikado's testing of the BEC:
http://www.vstabi.info/en/node/1389

Ok thanks, i will take a look at the product you mention.

[midnightx1]

For those following this thread, i have had a lot of communication with Gryphon this week about my burn out problem on the Hyper 75v BEC. They have been very helpful and have explained that this problem is very unlikely to happen but can occur possibly due to power surge and/or EMI surge when the battery is connected or reconnected in quick succession. Based on the photo evidence that i sent them, they do not think that my unit just overheated in flight or that the hv servos were too hungry.

This appears to be just an unlucky one off incident that they have not heard of before on this model and as no one else on this thread has come across this problem with the unit either, I am reassured by that and will continue with the hyper 75v on my 700 and just put it down to experience.

[frito169]

First off very sorry about your loss. I sure hope there's nothing wrong with these. I liked the specs, quality and appearance so much I put them on all my birds except the warp which has the smaller gryphon bec. I'd be very upset if I took out $1300 worth of electronics, not to mention the damage to the airframe, due to a bec failure.

[RasmusDK]

You are absolutely right.
But always have a extra backup, ~ maybe a scorpion backup guard or so.

It's sad to lose your expensive heli, but maybe it also could hurt someone. And that is even worse


I also uses gryphon bec on all my helis, and had never had any issue. And that after hundreds of flight.
I never head of other quasar burned, so you must be very unlucky

It's nice to hear you got good service, from gryphon. But they also weight that very high :-)

[TomC]

Just another though. A faulty switch and/or plugging the switch harness into this bec the wrong way around can fry it pretty quickly. Please do not ask me how I know, duh!

Cheers,
TomC

[midnightx1]

Originally Posted by TomC

Just another though. A faulty switch and/or plugging the switch harness into this bec the wrong way around can fry it pretty quickly. Please do not ask me how I know, duh!

Cheers,
TomC

It's ok i won't ask, but i can guess..!

In my case i wasn't using a switch, it was just a straight connection from the 12s to the BEC and straight out to the rx the other end. So far the replacement Gryphon BEC is working ok, however i did downgrade my servos to non HV and lowered the output voltage from the BEC to just 6v in order to reduce the risk further as that last crash cost me over £650 Pounds (approx $900 USD) so i really do not want a repeat of the same thing. The incident burnt out my Ikon Brain so i have ended up using my trusty old archived beastx now and i have to say that i had forgotten how simple to setup and locked in the beastx is.

[TomC]

Originally Posted by midnightx1

I
In my case i wasn't using a switch, it was just a straight connection from the 12s to the BEC and straight out to the rx the other end. .

Actually might be a good idea to use one of the Gryphon soft switches (slider or flag). They tell you you must use these above 55v input (=13s) but I use them on anything higher than 10s myself. I think it softens the in-rush current into the bec a bit.

Cheers,
TomC

[midnightx1]

Originally Posted by TomC

Actually might be a good idea to use one of the Gryphon soft switches (slider or flag). They tell you you must use these above 55v input (=13s) but I use them on anything higher than 10s myself. I think it softens the in-rush current into the bec a bit.

Cheers,
TomC

Ok thanks i will look into it.

[Matlockpete]

bench burn out adjusting vol,seems to be in the same place as yours,WHY ????,dont know if its caused any other damage,have e mailed gryphon photos.

[midnightx1]

Sorry to hear about your problem. Gryphon told me the problem was fixed with the newer version of the Bec. My problem occurred on model version 7075. The newer version is 7075F-LMT which had some kind of protection put in to stop surging (which was my problem).

How old is your BEC and what is the version of it

[Matlockpete]

GDR-7075 ,brand new for this years new Heli,only done two or three test flights.

[midnightx1]

You mean GSR-7075?

If there is no F or LMT after it then it is the old one. Where did you buy it?.

[Matlockpete]

Align trex uk,just hope my skookum 720 and my cc120hv edge is ok