No more Enerland LIPO cells

[sailr]

I used to use yousendit.com but I see now that they also charge you $50 a year! Dang!

[sailr]

Just found this free site:

https://www.transferbigfiles.com/

[sailr]

google this, it will give you a lot of links:

"free file transfers"

[norbique]

http://www.filedropper.com/a123es04fulop

[Himalaya]

FlightPower/MarinePower used to use good cells, but they couldn't make any money and were bought out by Hobbico. It does not surprise me that they are now using cheap Chinese cells. Too bad, another good supplier forced out of the market by the cheap Chinese sh**.

This is exactly what happened with NiMH cells. Sanyo and GP (Japanese) cells were the world's best, but once the Chinese started producing cells with advertised high capacity at 1/3rd the price, everyone bought the cheap sh** and Sanyo and GP simply stopped competing. The crap you get today is frightening. A club member recently bought a 6-cell pack of 4500 mAh NiMH cells, but after running them several times, the most they would take after a full discharge was 1100 mAh....and the lack was FULLY charged, warm with full voltage. Sweet, getting an 1100 mAh pack but paying for 4500 mAH. Don't you love cheap asian quality? How long before the same thing happens to LiPos?



.

GP(Gold Peak) is a HongKong company, with their manufacture facilities in China.

Intellect, or called IB cells, were also a Chinese brand.

GP and IB were probably the most punchy cells before the LiPo era came. The appear in 90% of the RC racing boats/cars some years back when rules allowed only Nickel batteries.

Sanyo OTOH, has great Eneloop cells, but mainly used as TX/RX pack, been away from RC racing power cell market for quite a while.

[Himalaya]

Flightpower used Enerland cells until Enerland cut them off for not paying their bills. Even when they did use Enerland, I got some pretty shabby packs from them. I have moved to Hyperions and am very happy with them.

So True.
Hyperion lipo wasn't so outstanding untill they switched to Chinese cells 2 years ago and named them G3 to stay clear from their earlier Enerland cell based packs.
They suffered same quality complains as FlightPower did for they used same Enerland cells. Warranty claims dropped significantly from roughly 2% to 0.05% since their Chinese made G3 replaced the older Enerland cell based packs, according to Dave(of Hyperion) himself. The numbers may be inacurate but pretty much around.
......
Key point to get best performance from Enerland cells: use fresh-from-factory cells, best within a month. Otherwise ridiculous internal resistance will build up. Mine got 5 times larger than original after just a few months. Now my "G2" Hyperion packs(took me alot $$) are only capable of field charging as electricity source, to prolong their days before going into the trash can.
.....
So what has led Enerland to leave ?

[norbique]

crappy management?

[sailr]

Flightpower was NOT bought out by Hobbico! Flighpower sold out their dealers by giving Hobbico the exclusive to distribute their packs. We got caught in that debacle. When Hobbico took on the line, they sold out th older packs at below dealer (our) cost. Really ticked off the dealer community. We lost a lot of money on the deal.

Flightpower is a British owned company. They sacked their US sales rep who was outstanding. Just bad management all the way around. You couldn't GIVE me a flightpower pack!

FlightPower/MarinePower used to use good cells, but they couldn't make any money and were bought out by Hobbico. It does not surprise me that they are now using cheap Chinese cells. Too bad, another good supplier forced out of the market by the cheap Chinese sh**.

This is exactly what happened with NiMH cells. Sanyo and GP (Japanese) cells were the world's best, but once the Chinese started producing cells with advertised high capacity at 1/3rd the price, everyone bought the cheap sh** and Sanyo and GP simply stopped competing. The crap you get today is frightening. A club member recently bought a 6-cell pack of 4500 mAh NiMH cells, but after running them several times, the most they would take after a full discharge was 1100 mAh....and the lack was FULLY charged, warm with full voltage. Sweet, getting an 1100 mAh pack but paying for 4500 mAH. Don't you love cheap asian quality? How long before the same thing happens to LiPos?



.

[sailr]

If your packs are swelling it's because you are storing them fully charged! That is a no-no with ANY lipo brand. If you are not going to use the packs within a few days, you should put a storage charge in them (80%)! Don't criticize the batteries if you're not following recommended procedures.

I have been guilty of not discharging packs that didn't get used right away and I have NEVER had a hyperion swell up or develop bad IR.

So True.
Hyperion lipo wasn't so outstanding untill they switched to Chinese cells 2 years ago and named them G3 to stay clear from their earlier Enerland cell based packs.
They suffered same quality complains as FlightPower did for they used same Enerland cells. Warranty claims dropped significantly from roughly 2% to 0.05% since their Chinese made G3 replaced the older Enerland cell based packs, according to Dave(of Hyperion) himself. The numbers may be inacurate but pretty much around.
......
Key point to get best performance from Enerland cells: use fresh-from-factory cells, best within a month. Otherwise ridiculous internal resistance will build up. Mine got 5 times larger than original after just a few months. Now my "G2" Hyperion packs(took me alot $$) are only capable of field charging as electricity source, to prolong their days before going into the trash can.
.....
So what has led Enerland to leave ?

[Fluid]

Flightpower was NOT bought out by Hobbico!

My bad, and I knew that too. And I was not meaning to imply that just because a cell is made in China that it is bad, just that a lot of Chinese cells sold here (nickel and LiPo) are junk.

Flightpower is a British owned company. They sacked their US sales rep who was outstanding.

Fortunately he landed at Castle, an AMERICAN company.

If your packs are swelling it's because you are storing them fully charged!

I believe he is referring to the packs' IR, not their size.



,

[norbique]

So what is it? 80% 70% 60%
Can someone confirm what is the target storage capacity a lipo pack? Thanks!

[ManuelW]

Hello Guys,

I discharge my lipos to a voltage of about 3.5V/cell so maybe 20-30% left. And thats the way I treat them for storage.

Best regards,
manuel

[norbique]

Thanks Manuel!

I was trying to point this out. Everyone has his/her own thinking of what is a storage state of charge. I read different opinions all the time, that's why I asked for more feedback!

[ManuelW]

Hello,

well in our german forum there was a nice discussion about the whole thing. Generally most think perfect is between 60-80% as it is written everywhere. But they also did a nice calculation. How much energy is stored in a lipo and at a certain mass they could calculate how much it would heat up with this energy eg to catch fire.
Interesting result was, that when 20-30% charged, means a cell voltage of about 3.4-3.5V the cells can't physically catch fire even in case of a short-cut.
Second thing is that cell-aging (right translation?) is slower when they are nearly empty. So I'd recommend to discharge them to the given voltage and store them "chilly" and dry. Check cell voltages every month, shoud be always above 3.0V/cell.
Up to now I didn't had negative eperiences with these recommendations.

best regards,
Manuel

[norbique]

Thank you Manuel!

How many years of experience are you talking about? How many years are you storing your packs at 3.5V / cell?

[ManuelW]

Hi Norbert,

well this year I'll be running my Kokam 5000 in the 4th season, oldest lipo pack of the PBS Passau. I run 2x 5S in my HPR06 Repsol.
German SAW 2008: 133.4km/h
German SAW 2009: 133.6km/h
German SAW 2010: 136.2km/h

So quite a constant performance over 3 years now. For the "newer" lipos, I'll see how long they will last but up to now I've never blown a single lipo cell.

Best regards,
Manuel

[sailr]

That's a good level.

Now if somebody would come out with a multi pack DISCHARGER that will discharge at more than 1 AMP!!

I made a discharge station using a brushless outrunner motor and airplane prop bolted to my bench. I monitor the packs with watt meter, volt meter, etc. It only takes about a minute to get them down to storage voltage!

Hello Guys,

I discharge my lipos to a voltage of about 3.5V/cell so maybe 20-30% left. And thats the way I treat them for storage.

Best regards,
manuel

[sailr]

I pull mine down to 3.2V per cell which is what I normally use for LVC.

Hello,

well in our german forum there was a nice discussion about the whole thing. Generally most think perfect is between 60-80% as it is written everywhere. But they also did a nice calculation. How much energy is stored in a lipo and at a certain mass they could calculate how much it would heat up with this energy eg to catch fire.
Interesting result was, that when 20-30% charged, means a cell voltage of about 3.4-3.5V the cells can't physically catch fire even in case of a short-cut.
Second thing is that cell-aging (right translation?) is slower when they are nearly empty. So I'd recommend to discharge them to the given voltage and store them "chilly" and dry. Check cell voltages every month, shoud be always above 3.0V/cell.
Up to now I didn't had negative eperiences with these recommendations.

best regards,
Manuel

[Himalaya]

If your packs are swelling it's because you are storing them fully charged! That is a no-no with ANY lipo brand. If you are not going to use the packs within a few days, you should put a storage charge in them (80%)! Don't criticize the batteries if you're not following recommended procedures.

I have been guilty of not discharging packs that didn't get used right away and I have NEVER had a hyperion swell up or develop bad IR.

I know what to do with lithium cells. I never leave any of my lipos(over 20kg) fully charged more than 5 hours. The batteries are charged just in the field, and discharged to 3.7~3.85v/cell with my Powerlab-8 if it's not used.

Please note my prolem pack were Hyperion previous generation with Enerland cells inside. And they are NOT swelling or puffy, but built huge IR, making them powerless. The new Chinese made Hyperion G3 OTOH which I also have some big packs, are great.

[jingalls007]

Just talked to Pat at RC-Lipos (customer service is second to none with that guy) and he gave me a screaming deal on two 5050 4s packs (PolyRC) and a new hyperion charger. He's ready to wheel and deal, nice guy, highly recommend him!

[Rumdog]

So, lets see if I have this right.
The guys telling me that Chinese cells are junk, and That Hyperion are the best... didn't know that Hyperions are also Chinese cells?

[Himalaya]

So, lets see if I have this right.
The guys telling me that Chinese cells are junk, and That Hyperion are the best... didn't know that Hyperions are also Chinese cells?

You got it. Funny how people are enjoying the money they saved and the performance they gained and keep saying China junk, crap, trash, sh**, shabby..... interesting human beings.

[sailr]

I think some of the comments about Chinese batteries come from experience with certain brands, not simply the fact they are made in China.

[norbique]

China made and still makes a HUGE amount of crappy stuff. Especially this part of the world is flooded with such products, and I don't speak about RC stuff only. This of course doesn't mean everything that comes China is crap. Much of em yes, but not all. Some people like to generalize, thus the above mentioned comments.
Their cheap lipos and other RC products help us poor people get into this beautiful hobby and we have to acknowledge that fact too.

[Himalaya]

Well back to the Enerland topic, they had at least one advantage over other manufacturer: they post Discharge Character Curves as well as datasheets on their website. This did give customers great confidence in their products especially to those who has tech background. The specs did show great performance though not sure that performance would last very long.

The Chinese Hyperion G3 OTOH, delivers great power and stays powerful at least 4 times longer than Enerland according to Dave of Hyperion. But no official curve can we find anywhere. All we have is a single datasheet that includes all lipo packs, and the IR spec there just makes no sense.

[sailr]

All I can say is that I get a lot more punch for a lot longer with hyperions than any other brand. Don't know why...I'm not a scientist...but my experience is enough to convince me. Everyone else in our club feels the same way. Well worth the xtra $$$.

[norbique]

Hey Jim! Any info on the prismatic A123 cells? :)

[sailr]

Nope. Can't find out anything about them. I'm sure it's for automotive/industrial applications only.