Help Please,
I got my Thunder AC6 Charger/Balancer last week and everything worked as advertised, I was so proud of this Charger, then after flying today I tried Charge/balancing my lipo's (1300mah, 11.1volts) with the AC6, when I hooked everything up, after 8sec I got a error signal of "Break Down" I have no idea what this means, the owners manuel does not go into detail, I set the AC6 up to charge at 1.3amps and 11.1 volts with no luck, still receiving "Break Down" error signal! Does anyone have an idea what I might be doing wrong or is it the charger? Any help would be greatly appreciated! BTW I balance charged a 1800mah at 1.8amps with 11.1 volts with no problems!
Happy Landings
PoppyDon

I'm speculating; but it could be that the LiPo's are not up to the minimum voltage which the charger expects.

In this case the charger may see the undervoltage and throw a generic error since it may not differentiate between a short and an over discharged pack.

OPjose,

Your a miracle worker, I took one of the Lipos and charged it with another charger and then hooked it up to the AC6 and its working, so what is the min voltage the charger expects?

opjose, is there a way to set the min voltage the charger will expect?

PoppyDon

Normally the minimum voltage values for LiPo's are fixed on computer controlled chargers.

The reason I thought to ask all of this, is that I had a similiar problem with a pack on a Team Checkpoint charger.

The TC 1040 charger would not charge the pack, so I placed the pack on a "dumb" charger for 20 minutes, and found that I could charge the pack again.

Normally an overdischarged LiPo pack is considered to be damaged beyond repair, so this is a safety feature.

Try to adjust your ESC programming to get it to determine the correct Cutoff voltage.

If you are unable to do this, I would suggest running the plane for 1/2 the amount of time you did before ( ALWAYS USE A TIMER!!!! )....

Then take the pack and charge it noting the amount of charge put back.

Let's say the pack is rated for 1800mAh

You take it out and fly it for 8 minutess. Then you charge tha pack and find that the charger put back 900mA of current.

An 1800mAh should only be let to discharge to around 1650mA, so you know that the MOST you want to fly will be about 14 minutes.

Set your flight timer for 13 minutes, leaving you with a 1 minute safety margin for missed approaches.

opjose, that sounds reasonable, just I hate the idea of having to charge on a little RTF charger in order to use the AC6, but if it has to be that way then so be it, I fly my Lipo's for only 3min and 45 sec's they are 1300mah 15C 11.1 volts, Im not sure I understand your formula but I will try and see if I can make sence of it, not to bright here, a newibe in all this elec stuff so bear with me, I appreciate all your help.

Happy LAndings
PoppyDon

So it may be that ( choose one! ) :

- Everything is fine but you are running the LiPo's down too much.
- You are pulling more current from the LiPo's than they can stand
- The pack itself may have a marginal cell

3 minutes and 45 seconds is a little light for the flight times.

I wonder if you have a damaged cell in a pack. If you can do a full cycle on that pack with your charger.
The charger should be able to report the capacity of the battery after a charge, discharge, charge cycle.

Set the discharge as high as the charger can handle. Normally small chargers max out at 5amps, but if you are limited to 2-4 use that instead.


You should pick up some 2200 mah packs ( PM me please! )

I often find that with these RTF's I can enlarge the battery area and stick a bigger pack in.

This ups the flight times.

Anyway it is unlikely that you are over discharging the packs as @ 15c your packs SHOULD be able to withstand 15 amps continuous and 19 amps burst draw.

Do your packs get VERY warm? Or just slightly warm? If the latter you are not drawing too much current from them and the plane is merely depleting them quickly... and bigger packs will help.

If the packs get very warm and/or slightly "puffy" after a flight, your are pushing out too much current, and you really need a larger pack with a higher "C" rating.

The ESC is rated to 25A, so 25A x 11.1v = 277 watts max.

In turn 277 watts divided by 1lb = 277 watts / lb.... which means that you don't need wings to fly this plane at maximum throttle!!!

At high throttle the motors may be capable of putting out more power than what your 1300mAh 15C packs can provide.

opjose

Thanks so much for your help, I am awaiting some lipos form Hobby King.com they are 1500mah 3cell 20C, currently they are out of stock I got to fly one of these batteries a friend let me borrow......wow what a difference in duration and performance, again opjose thanks a million for your help, you have helped me many times on this forum and I greatly appreicate your time and effort, maybe someday I can buy ya a beer in return Thanks again

PoppyDon