From looking at those pictures of the garage MA makes their lipos in it does not look like a very big operation. And it look like only one guy works there, all the other work stations are empty. How do the few people that work there keep up with sales and warranty work?

You're forgetting that the guy taking the pics probably is working there too...

One man can do a lot of work when he is good at it.

One man shows
 

Actually there are a lot of one man shows around here. In our hobby alone I can name a couple. Robin at UE has been a one man show for over a year now. Dan is a one man show for Kershaw Designs, and MonsterMike I believe started out as a one man show. Of course Mike has had a lot of help from forum members and local supporters in his area. The problem with one man shows happens when things are successful and the business grows a lot faster than first thought. Then again some business owners want to keep things small so the business does not take over their lives. Not sure what the issues are with company "P", but something must be working. The question is for how long?

Im wondering how long it takes to put together a 3s pack. That guy must be on meth to keep up with orders. just remember he must assemble enough packs to pay for all the advertising in mags, forums, race events etc, plus enough to pay the mortgage on his garage, house etc. plus enough to pay for the new marketing managers salary and his travels and room and board when he goes to shows like ihobby etc...the list goes on and on im sure. Hmmmm.........maybe i just explained the reason why "company p" lipos cost soo much! lol. But seriously how could 1, 2, 3 or even 5 or 6 people make enough packs to cover all those expenses?

When you buy the cells for a couple bucks each and sell a pack for $200+ it doesn't take to many to make the profits you need. A dozen packs a day could make you over $1000

Thats is funny that you would mention that. I was there and I didnt see them, but then again I wasnt looking for them! :lol:

It's sad to say but they do sell a shit load of packs....

Do you guys really think that MA assemble the packs...? Maybe (and I stress maybe) they put the main leads on and the balancer taps. Maybe. I took alot of them apart, and the early examples had the al tabs press crimped together. Later models with the copper (paper thin and press crimped to the same al tabs and sorta hidden under the foil) might have been soldered together.

I am guessing they order the packs as 2s, 3s,4s, etc and add the wires, taps and shrink. I can put those items on very fast, maybe 5mins a pack. Not to say I have assembled many packs, only a few hundred. And out of those maybe 50 were put together as individual cells. Given their layout and some 8hr days I could churn out some packs. Especially if you had one person per station and did it assembly line style. Pre cut the shrink, tin all of the balancer wires and main leads and then have at it. I can see at least 100 packs an hour come out if you had 3-4 people.

Hey Guys,

Here is a graph for you. I just got back from iHobby so there will be plenty of more of these and some videos to follow. Please be patient with me as I am very busy this week. Also, I saw Mike Cronin at iHobby and I gave him some Race Edition batteries to use as he see fits. I believe he said he was going to hook up an Eagletree system and do some real world testing on the track. Here is a discharge graph at 50 continious amps. Most 1/10 scale vehicles pull nowhere near 50 amps continious as you already know. Video of the testing will be posted shortly. Chat soon :) Brandon

http://www.maxamps.com/graphs/6500_50_amps.jpg

http://www.maxamps.com/graphs/6500_50_amps.jpg

Hmmm.........What is that? About a 7C or 8C discharge for this pack?

I was hoping for something a bit more aggressive that would show your competitive nature.......with other "premium" packs.

To be any sort of indication of a 150C rating, 50 amp discharge is nothing really.

Is this how you plan to show the performance of a pack capable of a 975 amp discharge?

50 amps is just a little over 1/20th of it's rating.

Around 9c? Don't think it really matters what kind of current the cars pull we just want to know where this arbitrary 150c rating comes from.

I thought that looked low, ~8c at best. But I am no Electrical guru, and havent played with a logger before( so what do I know)... but ~8c not getting full 6.5AH?

EagleTree will be the real deal on what these packs can do, looking forward to see what Mr.Monster comes up with ?

I'm going to have to play Devil's advocate here and say that I'm not really impressed by that graph. A 50A (~7.7C) discharge on a battery that is labeled as "true 150C" is kind-of ridiculous. I would like to know more about the 150C rating and how you guys calculated it. Realisticly, a 195A discharge would do more to substantiate the rating of these packs. Being rated at 150C, and having a capacity of 6.5AH, 195A is only 20% of the "spike" current rating. I am assuming that the 150C is a "spike" rating...

So what happens when I put 150c to this pack and it blows up in my face? You gonna admit then it was overated? Pretty sad if that's what it would take. We asked for proof and it was said that it would be given and then we get this weak sauce graph of a less than 10c discharge? Pretty insulting if you ask me.

I will post the other graphs and videos shortly. Here is the information on how we rate our cells. (added to the website shortly)

*Please note this is a cell rating, as you know Deans and Traxxas connectors can only handle around 70 amps continious.

Our 150C Packs
150C - Maximum burst rating without swelling or damaging the cell. This is a 1 second burst.
100C - Maximum sustained burst rating without swelling or damaging the cell. This is a 10 second burst.
75C - This is the continious rating that the cell can handle through the full discharge without swelling or damaging the cell.

Expected
 

Truthfully that is pretty much what I expected they would show us. This is like advertising a brand new Corvett being able to do 200mph and then posting video of it tip toing through the park at 15mph with the top down. This is your example of what a 150c LiPo pack can do? Really? Are you kidding us? Marketing director?? I think you better pony up and really put these packs to the test if you expect to impress anyone in this market today.

MonsterMike please do some real world playtime with your packs and share some honest info with us (negative or positive). This is rediculous.

I just got back from iHobby so please be patient with me as I upload all the graphs and videos we have.

I have a video of our maxamps.com batteries starting dragsters with 1000+ HP engines. So I think you will be impressed with their performance.

PLEASE SHOW THIS, DIRECT SOLDER. No BS Plug excuse. EDIT: what can the 12awg wire handle?

:yes:

:lol:

Good enough for me. We could have avoided all this hubub by just postin that in the first place. Why delay? Whatever, those specs seem halfway realistic but due to my past experience with ma and the usual reluctance to provide actual proof, I will believe it when I see it. Still a 75c constant is 487.5 amps. Let's see that graph. I will try to refrain from posting and wait patiently for these graphs and videos. As for the dragsters being started, uh yeah....

Mr. Wilcox, have you familiarized yourself with this site and it's people before coming here? This graph is ridiculous. Please stop insulting the intelligence of the well informed people in this forum and give them real proof, real data, real test results.

True DOES NOT mean "only true for 1 second." Only true for 1 second means sometimes true. Anyone with a college degree knows that implicitly and anyone who has taken an LSAT knows that explicitly.

Well, I am satisfied. This was just another trashy hoax. Thanks again Maxamps.

NM, didn't see the paintshop pic...


edit: if that is a accurate graph, your only getting 4800mah out of a big @$$ brick of a pack... at only 1\20 of the C rating...


sooo...

6500-4800= 1700mah was lost as heat...


did the pack come off at 100*+???

If MA wants to clear their name they can send me two 2s packs, I can wire them in series and run them in my truggy, then run them in my brushless SC10, and a stock slash, all while hooked up to an Eagle tree. Of course Mike I'm sure can do the same thing. I won't bash on the batteries if they take the abuse, but I'm sure a real world test would prove that those ratings are bogus. If I could run them until they hit a 3.2v/cell cut off in my truggy and have them be under 110* I'd be happy

Calm down everyone let the man talk. He is most likely very aware of the shoes he must fit. I am waiting patiently for these graphs. Everyone else should do as well.

As I said earlier, his credentials should mean something at least, so following through with the promised graphs should be something he is capable of. I believe he will post up a graph of these batteries results. If not haze all you want.

On a personal note, Brandon, I buy the best I can afford, I have always wanted to give your company a chance. But evidence in this case will do you all the better. Especially with this forum.

On a side note, if the length of time taken is to prefab up a photoshopped graph of your packs with silly unrealistic numbers. Don't waste your time here, send it to RCDriver and RC Car Action for your latest add.

On another side note: 1000hp dragsters started with a lipo. Seems like your trying to elude the audience with that one. Give me the manufacturer of the starter and I will tell you how much currant it pulled from the battery. It doesn't take an outstanding amount to turn over a blown v8 than it does my 1.5l inline 4.

On a further side note: Get one of these packs to continuously crank a diesel in a big rig for a while than you have something.

Why am I not suprized. So actually they are 75C cont / 150C burst @ 1 second. But wait, on the website it says:

No mention of continuous or burst ratings, just 'True 150C rating'; that implies 150C continuous without any other info being offered. You're the marketing rep right? Is it standard practice for MA to mislead customers with totally false ratings ( ofcourse it is, been around too long to know or think otherwise... ), or to simply leave out the rather important fact that that 150C rating is for a 1 second burst- god knows what the voltage droops to under that kind of load.

7.7C discharge graph is just :lol: too.

Funny thing about the starting dragster engines coment- I've seen A123 cell packs used to start motorbike dragster engines and those cells are only 2300mah 30/60C, terrible voltage drop underload yet they got the engine turning over just fine- right until the wiring on the bike started to smoke ( ignition was left off so the engine didnt actually start, just kept turning it over for several minutes ). I've also seen a normal 6s lipo start a 4x4 pickup engine by jumping it to the 12v batt which was flat; nothing short of a very impressive discharge graph with video or photographic proof of the readings from the discharge apparatus will change mine or many other people's opinions of MA. :no:

I don't understand the obsession with graphs. Do you drive graphs? Do you race graphs against everyone else to make the A-Main? Graphs are useless. All that matters is the performance at the loads we put on the packs in this hobby. I believe these packs will more than satisfy the needs of my ESC and motor in my 1/8th scale vehicles.

If a graph gets posted showing the pack handling a 150c load for 1 second, that won't mean a single thing to me. Nor will seeing a graph showing a 75c load for an entire discharge. Seeing my truggy sail to a checkered flag victory in a 12 minute main, clearing the triple every time, that means something to me. Oh, wait, that's what my current MaxAmps 6500 pack did for me just Saturday.

These guys are innovative and enterprising. They make good products and they market them well. On top of all that, they are out there in the hobby. You can see them at RCX, they have a phone number on their web site and now they are even here on this forum. If you are not a fan, so be it but live and let live...

Wow, tough crowd in here. I'm just as skeptical about 70C continuous as the next guy, but I think we all need to calm down a tad. Let him post more of the graphs/data and then we can let the comments fly (but still keep them based on observations derived from facts, and no bashing).

About the graph: to me, it looks like an acceptable graph for a ~20C rated pack judging by the voltage drop vs current and usable capacity (no data on temperature but I'm sure that's coming in due time). Of course, internal resistance is not exactly linear with load so that's just an objective opinion. I sincerely hope that the claims are valid simply for the sake of liability, but then again, what setup can pull anything resembling 300A+ continuously?

@Electric Dave: You are right, graphs aren't representative of a running vehicle, but they do show the relative performance between various cells if testing is executed in a similar fashion.

Holy Cow Guys!!
 

Wow,

I'm suprised this thread has had so much attention lately. I know you guys are waiting for "charts and graphs" but I do agree somewhat that the battery needs to speak for itself in real time real world testing also. I realize that the true 150c rating might be a little over the top but think about this in a real world application.

1. Have you guys stopped to think about what a 1 sec burst of 150c will do to your truck/car? It's gonna tear the shiatz out of your parts, your going to wheely out of control no matter how fast or slow your going. I think most people in hear that know brushless understand what I'm trying to say. Even with a flux 5t conversion, (just an example), your not going to put that power to the ground with any positive results.

2. If MA were catering to the "knowledgable" brushless guru's out there they would market this battery as such. Reliable, stable, continous power ratings, cool temps etc... I don't think that is their nitch, they cater to the "new" brushless customer, the occasional weekend basher. Im not saying they don't want us as customers, I only pointing out that most of us here buy other brands out of experience, not an impulse buy. MA is an impulse buy in my honest opinion.

3. Lets see what real world testing shows up. These might be a higher quality cell and if so other more reliable brands will surely be to follow.

Will I ever buy a MA battery again, no. I lost my faith a while back with this company and I'm willing to bet no matter what the "charts and graphs" say, most of you guys bashing in here will never buy a MA battery again either. So lets give MA a shot to prove there batteries. Maybe there are some guys in here that are interested in these batteries and if so, they will be the true test. Let's be patient, I'm looking forward to the results myself only because it wil be a sign of what's to come for the future of lipos.

I'm not knocking anyone but lets try to keep an open mind.

If you paid $300 for a 75c lipo and it only performed as a ~30c lipo, you'd be upset wouldnt you, whether you won the race or not? You could have spent 1/3 of the money on a true 25-30c lipo and still won the race = value for money & getting what you paid for, thats the thing we're talking about here. You can win races with batts that are much cheaper and hold true to their ratings, there is no need for exaggerated claims of discharge capability since it only misleads & impresses the unknowing ( over head is nice but few 1/8 applications require more than about a 40-50c lipo, Nick case not withstanding :lol: ). If MA werent so obsessed with crazy-high ratings & advertising everywhere possible, their prices could come down & their warrenty could be improved ( actually replace a bad pack, not offer a discount on a new one.. ) whilst still maintaining a healthy profit margin- word of mouth is a powerful marketing & advertising tool, but it is currently working against MA, too many bad feelings from disappointed owners and too many people fed up with the extortionate prices; if they could justify charging more than the real premium brands then fair enough, but at present I see only a poor graph and false ratings listed on their site...

Toyota and honda make cars that can power themselves for miles using only a crap load of 18650 lithiums which can barely handle 1c... I could start a dragster off AA batteries with enough of them. You can hand crank most motors too... Blown drag cars run 9:1 compression or so, I could likely trun them over by pulling down on the blower drive belt.

Plus most rc car guys on this forum like to use our lipos for running our rc cars. So some sort of "stunt spectacle" vid you have will not really be needed or enjoyed.

An eagle tree or similar graph with a very high sample rate (milliseconds) would be nice. Apply the 150c load on it momentarily and repeat. See how the battery does. Do this at the tabs, no need for the pesky 12 gaugewire to get in the way of a real test.

I would also like to see the 70c cont graphed. 50 amps cont is a lot of pull, but we are not the boat forum here.. We do spike alot of current, especially the rc drag guys.

Keep the info coming, just skip the shock and awe stuff, better to save that for the traxxas forum and the flux owners.

well put:yes:


has anyone looked at MA's prices recently?? there getting close to the average price for a "race" lipo...

Bottom line
 

The bottom line here is that MaxAmps is boasting a "race ready LiPo pack that can handle a "true 150C discharge". Your words not ours. What that means in real terms is that this battery should be able to hold 150C discharge for at least 5 or 10 seconds at a time without having its voltage drop below 3.2volts or the battery pack heat up and explode, correct? Just because you see a milisecond spike even close to that amp draw does not qulaify any battery source to claim a 150C rating. If your add states that it will handle 150C spike/1 second bursts, than you will have stated the truth if in fact it can actually do this, which we still have not seen.

"C" ratings are based on a batteries ability to hold its nominal voltage (3.2v) without drooping under load=150c for a specified amount of time (lets say 10 seconds) or continuous load without melting. Please show us that your "Race Ready LiPo battery" can stand up to your claims. Otherwise it is just a bunch of hogwash or false advertising on your part.

Cut down the pricing too boot, since you're buying Chinese cells in bulk and just badging them.

I have a rc mag that has a MaxAmps ad for price matching, which says see the website for details. Go to the website and nothing is there of course.

Thanks for the responses guys. I am doing what I can to get you more graphs and videos in a timely matter. Please understand, I was at iHobby all weekend and I have a lot to catch up on. All the material I have to market these packs wasn't ready to go, but I wanted to announce the packs for iHobby as it is a exciting release for us. So thanks again for being patient with me. I am working on getting some more strenuous test results for you, so that is on the way. Hopefully Mike and a few others I sent batteries too will also post their results too when they get a chance to do their testing. I am aware that continious tests aren't as important as burst tests. We are working on getting those to you shortly.

Regarding our graph and the comments about it. That is the screen shot of the graph off the computer. No photoshop, no changing, just the facts. As you can see at 50 amps the capacity drops a little to 5700mah. This is as honest as we can be. We also took a video during testing if you would like to watch that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeT7JCmUIp8

suicideneil
You say our prices are outrageous? Well we actually have lowered our pricing structure quite a bit. Our prices are very competitive with other reputable brands. So can you please point out some actually prices that we can both check together online with similar quality packs. Also what is the guarantee on these packs?

lincpimp
No matter how you look at it an RC car starting a 1000+ HP dragster is cool. I'm not a auto mechanic nor am I very familiar with dragsters but I think it's cool that there are guys out there that run our packs in every event they run. If this is something that doesn't interest you then that's ok but I think there are some guys out there that will get a kick out of the video.

JERRY2KONE
Here is how we rate our cells.


*Please note this is a cell rating, as you know Deans and Traxxas connectors can only handle around 70 amps continious.

Our 150C Packs
150C - Maximum burst rating without swelling or damaging the cell. This is a 1 second burst.
100C - Maximum sustained burst rating without swelling or damaging the cell. This is a 10 second burst.
75C - This is the continious rating that the cell can handle through the full discharge without swelling or damaging the cell.

thzero
I am unfamiliar with that ad. It must have been something that was done before I came on board. Maybe give us a call in the office and ask to speak with Austin. 888-654-4450

Thanks again guys and remember I am here to help you get the information you need. So be patient as I get the rest of the other material and if there is something that you would like to see just post up and I will try to provide that for you.

Have a good one.

Brandon

This needs to be posted on the website. The website has plenty of 'True 150C' marketing lingo on it, but has nothing that says what it is. Perhaps next to the "Lipo Care Page" there needs to be an "Lipo Explanation Page" that explains what you mean by your various terms, spelled out. Do other battery resellers do it? Maybe not, but here is your chance to set yourself apart in the industry, and perhaps set something positive going forward.

That being said. I would highly suggest that you get in touch with ThunderPower, SMC, (and other US or Canadian based battery resellers) etc. and figure out a common set of testing scenarios you can all live with and publish. They all need to play by the same rules, same can't really be said of the HongKong/Chinese/et al. companies.

Also talk to the motor and ESC (CC, Novak, Tekin, etc.) guys and find out their exact needs.

Enough of the "black magic", people want facts and want to know what they are spending their hard earned cash on, especially given the economic times in which we are currently embroiled.

As for the pricing, I'll go dig up and post a pic of it if I can find the mag again. But unfortunately you need to deal with the HongKong, etc. competitors as well as western based competitors. You need to deal in facts, not rants, about why your pricing is high versus theirs. Trashing other companies to defend yourself, well that just makes you look bad (something politicians have yet to learn). And when I say "you" I mean MaxAmps as a company, not any specific person.

Bottom line, people will buy a quality and competively priced product that is backed by good customer service. Look at CC as one example of a smaller player in the industry, compared to say HPI/Traxxas. Excellent product, excellent customer service (really beyond excellent). Yes more expensive than say some of the overseas companies (which is not to say overseas products are bad, etc), but people still buy and use CC products.

I have to point out something to you Mr Wilcox, you keep on thanking us for our patience. Well it looks to me that you are the one who has been very patient with us so I thank you in return. You have represented your company very well up to now.

THIS is the testing I would like to see, it was mentionned before by someone else IIRC. You don't even have to go up to 487.5 amps. If Maxamps' new race lipo can handle a continuous 450 amp load through its full discharge without swelling or be damaged, THAT would be impressive. With the graph posted of course. I like graphs.

This is number 2 on my list of things to do this week. As far as working with other manufacturers and rating the batteries as in industry, we tried that with surge watt ratings. People didn't want to play ball seeing as they want to market a C rating. Since that is the case, we are going to post on the website exactly how we rate our packs and all the information we have regarding our C ratings.

Ok let me see what I can do.

Thanks

Brandon

I would like to say that I think Mr Wilcox has represented MA very well in this thread. We are a tough crowd, and he appears to be taking our heavy criticism as constructive. Big step up from when Jason was here and he took everything personally... Good job Brandon, keep the info coming.