Lipo's sparking when plugged in? & Charging ?

[supralover72]

Today I finished my project and I went to test fit the batt. I plugged it in for 1 sec to see if it would fit, just enough the the deans contacts touched and a huge orange spark...well...sparked. Is this normal? Should I be worried?

Also, the Neu batt didn't come with instructions. Could someone please tell me how to charge the 4s 25c 5000mah neu on ac with an 0606i? The charger instructions are confusing. I do have the right balancer adapter.

Thanks a lot for the help guys!

[BrianG]

It kinda depends on the size of the spark. If everythign is working right, sparking is common, especially with hi current ESC (they have more capacitance) and/or high voltage. It's not "bad" per se, but can pit the contacts over time. You can use this page to calculate a charging resistor if it bothers you. However, if you have bad FET(s), it could mean you have a short internally to the ESC. Hard to say without seeing it.

About the charger; are you questioning the balancer wire hookup? For charge settings, just set the cell count to 4. Set the charge rate at 5A, or the cell capacity to 5Ah, whichever setting is used.

[supralover72]

The amperage is what I was wondering about. What does 1c equal again? And should I cycle my lipo on the charger first or just charge and go?

Thanks for the help.

[lincpimp]

Just charge it up and go. 1c means 1xthe battery's capcity (amp hour) So your 5000 mah = 5 ah x 1 = 5 amps charge rate. You can charge at less than that, it will just take longer.

Make sure that you set the lvc correctly in the mm, and I always set mine via the custom setting to 3.1v per cell, or 3.2v per cell, so 12.4v, or 12.8v. I only do that in case the pack goes out of balance and one cell drops lower than 3v while the others are over 3v. That can fool the lvc as it sees the entire pack voltage, so you could have 12v in the pack, but one cell can be below 3v. You have a good lipo so that should not be an issue.

[supralover72]

Thanks for that linc. I'll custom set it just to be safe. Installing it on the new (relatively) comp with Vist-sucks, so it's giving me some trouble.

If you're talking about installing the Castle software on Vista the only trick is downloading the installer and then right clicking on it and selecting run as administrator. It's been working fine on my machine.

[supralover72]

Yup, did that right after I posted my above post. Thanks for the tip.