I bought 2x turnigy reactor 250 watt + power supply. I also bought a 100 amp load tester from harbor freight. S Keith, the 1000 Watt that you're advising to purchase is actually not available anywhere. I want to start trying to discharge / recharge these batteries but I have no idea what voltage and amp settings to run to see what I can make these batteries do. If its total garbage that the ebay seller sent me then I have about 4 days to submit for a refund to send this dude back his trash batteries. Can you guide me in the right direction for the settings to use? I would prefer to charge at the subpack (that means 2 sticks, right?) level because its easy to connect the reaktor up that way.

Thanks

 

Here: https://www.banggood.com/Charsoon-An...r_warehouse=CN

Different name, same guts. Clone of iCharger 3010.

250W has only 20W of discharge power, so you're limited to about 20/14.4 = 1.4A. Probably better to limit it to 1.2A, so you will get a constant current discharge. Unfortunately, that will take about 4-5 hours per subpack. HOWEVER, if you discharge the first and then use regenerative discharge to CHARGE the subpack you just discharged, you can go up to 7A.

If the 250W has a formation charge option, it's a good way to top off the subpacks. You would set it to 5.5A and 12 cells (14.4V). This will conduct a 5.5A charge for about an hour followed by 2.5 hours of 0.55A to balance each subpack. Downside is it takes about 3.5 hours per subpack.

After the formation charges, you would discharge the first two subpacks at 1.2A and then enable regenerative discharge. Power the charger with the recently discharged subpack and discharge the new subpack into the last at 7A. Alternatively, if you have a 12V battery with some available capacity, you can discharge into the 12V. It's a balancing act though, and you have to set your regenerative discharge to the appropriate voltage for the battery powering the unit. For 12V lead-acid, probably 14.8V works and for powering with a 12cell subpack, 17.2V is probably good.

If you choose cycling, set your NiMH sensitivity to 2mV, charge current to 5.5A and discharge to 12V @ 1.2A.

Zero chance of you being able to successfully test them before your return period lapses. Per the linked process, there is a week long waiting period.

 

I mostly have no idea what you're talking about. Completely independently of any research or any advise I've gotten anywhere, I used the nimh discharge feature and plugged up one by one, using the settings .1A to discharge to 2V . Here are the results:

subpack1: 1:58 (1 minute 58 seconds)
sp2: 3:16
sp3: 0:30
sp4: 1:00
sp5: 0:59
sp6: 0:33
sp7: still running; 16 minutes and counting, its down to 2.9v though, might as well say 20 minutes
sp8: 1:20
sp9: 1:46
sp10: 1:47
sp11: 0:39


so this way i have a quick basis for comparison and an idea of how to move forward... it seems that sp7 is maybe my only decent battery here but in my mind i'm thinking to myself maybe i need to get all these charged before i make that conclusion... what settings on my turnigy do i want to try running on these subpacks to try to charge them? I'm really thinking they are all junk except subpack 7... what might have happened is a hybrid tech tried to dump all his total trash on me...

 

ANNNNNNNND for the last couple of hours i've continued adventuring... after i did the .1A discharge to 2V I followed that up with a .1A discharge to .3V. Then I reran the .1A discharge to .3V again. I recorded exactly how long all these different runtimes.

1st .1 discharge to .3v-
sp1: 2:19
2: 19:22
3: 1:17
4: 24:14
5: 1:48
6: 0:44
7: 9:01
8: 10:52
9: 11:22
10: 2:40
11: 53

2nd discharge run .1a to .3v, after just sitting for however long it took to run through the ones behind it in the last process
1: 1:58
2: 4:16
3: 1:10
4: 5:11
5: 1:35
6: 0:36
7: 5:30
8: 3:06
9: 5:04
10: 2:20
11: 0:45

now I'm running the forming charge 5.5AH 14.4V (12s) and I'm recording those times as I go. I will post those soon. It will take a couple of days to get through all that I think.
Thanks for advising me. I am not knowledgeable but I think I got kind of lucky when I stepped down to the reactor 250 without asking. I should have probably asked and bought the rebadged 1000 that you linked me.

I don't understand everything but obviously I'm diving right in. I hope the discharges I ran wouldn't hurt anything, the voltages seem to climb back up after sitting after running those discharges.

 

And another note, I now have a much better idea of what you're talking about. Having actually started the form charges and reading over what you typed and linked all over again and again has helped with the comprehension

thank you, very kindly, for taking the time

 

Are you trying to destroy the subpacks? There is absolutely, positively no reason to discharge subpacks to those levels. Period. If the starting voltages of those subpacks were 14.4V or less, your first operation should have been a charge.

The testing you did has absolutely, positively no diagnostic value whatsoever. Your test is analogous to determining how a tire will perform on the race track by establishing how well it serves cake. You should destroy the records and edit the posts to remove it, so you're not tempted to use it down the line.

Your choice on the 250W was somewhat fortunate. At least you didn't buy some 5-10W discharge chunk of garbage like an imax B6 or similar. The other Reaktors with 300W power touting NiZN and LiHV have all been nerfed to utter garbage, so nice bullet dodge. Given that nearly 3 weeks have elapsed between your posts, I'm surprised you didn't reach out for input on sourcing.

The only way this is going to work in any meaningful way is to use regenerative discharge. In this situation, you are using a 10-18V battery source to power the unit. The battery must have sufficient uncharged capacity to receive the discharge from the subpack being discharged. The chart on manual page 4 shows the location of the "Regenerative DSC" option in the settings menu. The voltage needs to be set to the PEAK charge voltage of the battery providing the power (14.8V for a lead acid 12V and 17.2V for HCH2 subpack), and the current set to as high as possible.

If you opt to use an automotive 12V to power the unit while charging a subpack, it will generally provide enough available capacity to accept the discharge of the subpack it just charged. Note that regenerative discharge is grossly inefficient on a mAh basis - about 50%, so you will always have to replenish the battery source charge to keep going. Here's a useful scenario:

Use your power supply to charge 9 of 11 formation charges.
Use a 12V battery to formation charge the last two subpacks.
Set regenerative charge on to max A and 14.8V
Discharge the last two subpacks into the 12V.
Disconnect 12V.
[>}Use the two discharged subpacks to power the units.
Set regenerative charge on to max A and 17.2V
Discharge the next two subpacks into the last two subpacks at 7A terminating at 12V.
Record mAh and time.[<]
Repeat between > and < for each subpack.

The above will enable you to test all 11 subpacks at 7A with each discharge taking less than an hour, and it will leave all but the last two subpacks in at least a partial state of charge (about 50% of the mAh of the subpack discharged into it).

If you're using high quality connections like ring terminals secured with bolts, the internal resistance measurement becomes useful for comparison. If you're using alligator clips, don't bother. If you thread terminal bolts into the sticks, clamp the alligator clips on the threads and then gently finger tighten the bolts to pinch the sides of the alligator clip between the bolt and terminal face, that will usually suffice. If possible, all testing should be done that way. Take care not to substantially deform the clips.

 

No, not trying to destroy subpacks. If there's no value in doing the discharge (or really less than no value, you're saying the potential to harm is definitely there) then I'm definitely not tempted to repeat.

I'm on my last 2 formation charges. When I did my first two, my turnigies gave me an error saying that I'd hit the limit at 5000maH. For the next 7 I ran with a changed setting I bumped the limit to 6701. Now I've gotten the error again at that level for the next 7. Sound normal? Good? Bad? Should I have went 8000 or something else?

 

5.5A for 1 hr + .55A for 2.5 hr = 6875mAh input - this is what the reaktor is trying to put into a 12S NiMH battery rated for 5.5Ah.

I would set it to 7000.

For the ones that terminated at 5000mAh, I would repeat the formation charge and manually terminate it at 1900mAh input (for simplicity, you can just set the cap limit to 1900mAh). Given that they're already mostly charged, after a brief charge at 5.5A, it will hold 17.76V and taper the current. It will then likely drop to .55A before the 1900mAh target is reached, so it may take a while.

Remember to reset the cap limits to 7000 before you attempt discharging.

Do you plan to let them sit for 7 days before testing?

 

Welllllllllll.... I haven't gotten that far yet

What is the best way to test the sticks? More regenerative recharges and you measure/record the times again?

 

The single most ****ing problem with the HCH2 cells is self-discharge. Given the numbers you reported in your first discharge, I assume the subpacks were all under 12V. They were completely discharged, so cycling probably probably won't buy you anything.

Here's what I recommend:

Once all 11 supacks have received a formation charge with at least 6500 mAh input, let them sit for 7 days.
On day 7 use your load tester to test each STICK individually for 15 seconds. Record start voltage on a separate meter and end voltage immediately prior to termination (don't trust the analog gauge of the tester).
In between each stick test, place the load tester in front of a fan and allow the load tester to rest 2 minutes between tests.
Discharge each SUBPACK to 12V @ 7A using the regenerative discharge technique described previously, record capacity and time.

The ONLY reason you record time is regenerative discharge can be hard to manage. a longer time indicates the discharge didn't sustain 7A through the entire discharge.

Save yourself a copy of this sheet and populate it:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Another thing that can provide some wicked insight into the health of the sticks is to record all 132 cell voltages by probing through the shrink. With that information, capacity testing is almost unnecessary. It's horribly tedious though.