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I will be contacting Castle to when I have time to let them know its time for the Hydra HV series to be discontinued. While attempting to make the final connection with a one day old Hydra 180HV on 10s, the terminals arc welded in my hands, burning the skin and finger nails on my finger and thumb of my left hand, leaving them in a black carbon dust. Most everyone at the SAW event heard the bang it made, and came over. I thought I was done for at first. Checked myself over, and immediately checked to see what had happened. Postive wire to positive, negative to negative, jumper between the two packs to make a series setup, all the connector was gone into fire and dust. Quickly pulled the packs out for fear of meltdown. Doug Smock and Chris Harris come running over, we start looking over things. No popped caps-check, No reverse polarity-check, batterys voltage all checks out correct, and then Doug checked the setup using another technique on 2s to see if the controller was the issue. Sure enough, the 2s pack and controller made another welding scene on a smaller scale and in a more contolled way. We pulled the controller, and there it was, a hot spot on the control board. We confirmed this was a controller issue that created a dead loop inside itself.
I am very lucky, and honestly, Castle should feel lucky too that nothing worse happened. I hate to say it, but the HV hydra line as a joke, it has been, and apparently always will be. They have replaced it with the HV Ice series, so its time for these death traps to go. I am very disappointed and quite honestly contemplated walking away from FE yesterday because of this. After regaining my thoughts, talking to people like Doug Smock, we just decided we need to be safer. Fire retardant gloves and eye protection will need to be the norm from now one.
If this was a one time indecent, I would not point fingers, but I think Castle knows these are not good designs, and until yesterday I figured hey, if you get a bad one, they just go bad upon plug in, never in a million years would I guess a controller could dead short creating a very dangerous condition for the user.
Guys be careful out there, no matter what the brand. Never did I think a controller even had the ability to create a dead loop. Well, they do, so please take caution.
Mike
I am very lucky, and honestly, Castle should feel lucky too that nothing worse happened. I hate to say it, but the HV hydra line as a joke, it has been, and apparently always will be. They have replaced it with the HV Ice series, so its time for these death traps to go. I am very disappointed and quite honestly contemplated walking away from FE yesterday because of this. After regaining my thoughts, talking to people like Doug Smock, we just decided we need to be safer. Fire retardant gloves and eye protection will need to be the norm from now one.
If this was a one time indecent, I would not point fingers, but I think Castle knows these are not good designs, and until yesterday I figured hey, if you get a bad one, they just go bad upon plug in, never in a million years would I guess a controller could dead short creating a very dangerous condition for the user.
Guys be careful out there, no matter what the brand. Never did I think a controller even had the ability to create a dead loop. Well, they do, so please take caution.
Mike
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