Balancing Team Orion /Peak Racing Lipo Packs

[danjoy25]

Guys,

got a pack arriving shortly and would like to find out if anyone knows how to charge the cells individual. I was told that there is a port that connects to each cell for balancing. Any help would be great.

[SS Pede]

We've been discussing this recently (I like the looks of those packs too) and nobody has figured out exactly what device would balance those packs. I assume Orion will release something eventually, but until then there's no easy way to balance them.

[danjoy25]

Surely it can't be that hard as the port exist and if someone knows which taps connects to which cell then you can charge each one to balance them.

[danjoy25]

Found it from another Forum posted by the man himself:

Use a 2mm plug to plug into the balancing port.
http://teamorion-avionics.com/Acces...ConnectorsPlugs

Then you will connect the negative charge lead to the negative battery lead/socket and the positive charger lead to the balancing port, and charge.

Once charged, you then will hook the positive charger lead to the positive battery lead/socket and the negative charger lead to the balancing port, and charge.

Once that is done, you are balanced

[SS Pede]

That page you linked to has nothing on it for me, but the Orion avionics stuff is interesting. They've got a 4800 pack but without the hard case and with a more standard balancing plug thingy. Check it out everyone: http://teamorion-avionics.com/Batteries+Li-Po/4800mAh

And they have a balancer that looks identical to the Hyperion LBA6. http://teamorion-avionics.com/Cell+Balancer/Stability+Balancing+System

[NIC]

Hi danjoy25,

I have 4 Platinum packs for my tourer, they work great, you will be very happy with the runtime.
For balancing the cells you connect it just like Rick H. said on another forum.

A Tamiya plug with Orion twisted cons. at the end is supplied with each Platinum pack. Take out one of the pins in the Tamiya plug and use that to plug in to the 2mm balancing port under the pack. You will not use the supplied Tamiya adapter anyways. Or you could buy a 2mm gold pin connector.

Then charge 2 of the four cells in the pack. The pack contains 4 cells as you know, you will charge 2 of those cells in parallell 1S2P for 4800. Set your charger to charge a 1 cell Lipo.
Connect the negativ lead from the charger to negativ on the pack then the positiv lead from the charger to the balancing port, this way you charge 2 of the four cells, 1S2P, 3,7V and 4800 mAh. Then after that you charge the other 2 cells by connecting the positiv lead from the charger to the positiv on the pack and then the negativ lead to the balancing port.

I have about 10 cycles trough each of them and they stay very balanced, I have just now balanced the cells "for fun" if you know what I mean.

I use them pretty much like I use normal sub-C cells. I only race them 5 min and don´t use the extra capacity they give. I can get 11 min of runtime in a tourer geared 8,2:1 with the UF-75 and Hacker C40-6S if I charge them full.
What I do instead is I just charge the pack until it reaches 8,4V wich is around 4200 mAh then run a 5min heat wich only uses around 1800-1900mAh. Then charge that capacity back wich doesn´t take long.
The reason for this is it takes such a long time to fil the extra 600mAh, because the charger goes down in charge rate all the way up to the 4800 mark. At the end it only charges at 0.4-0.3A. It it´s not worth the wait and you reduce the risk of overcharge one cell in the pack.

If you run the UF, set the voltage cut-off to a minimum of 6,3V.

NIC

[crazyjr]

Here is another alternative http://fmadirect.com/detail.htm?item=2124&section=32 its a harnsee that will allow an orion/peak lipo to be charged by a FMA scorpion charger and allow a 2c charge rate

[SpEEdyBL]

That page you linked to has nothing on it for me, but the Orion avionics stuff is interesting. They've got a 4800 pack but without the hard case and with a more standard balancing plug thingy. Check it out everyone: http://teamorion-avionics.com/Batteries+Li-Po/4800mAh [/URL]

It looks to me that these are kokam's new 4800 cells, not the 2400 cells that are in the orion pack, but the plug is different than the node connector on kokam's cellpro packs. Interesting.