Litium Cell Testing with SkyRC IMAX B6AC V2

So I took the leap and purchased aSkyRC IMAX B6AC V2 charger. My Yuasa LEV40 Lithium batteries (from a Mitsubishi Outlander) willarrive soon, so I am looking for advice on the best approach to testing/charging the 80 LEV40 cells.

I have read theSkyRC IMAX B6AC V2will only support a maximum of 5 or 6 cells in serial. Would appreciate any advice from those of you that have experience with theSkyRC IMAX B6AC V2 and lithium cells.

Thanks forthe help

Discharge to a max 3.0V per cell for safety in series.

You could drain the cells to 2.5V, but for an extra margin of safety, discharging to 2.8V, and even better, to 3.0V is recommend in series builds.

You will lose just a bit of capacity, but gain in safety, and in cycle life.

And Only ok to charge (balance) up to 6s. You can charge 7s lipo in the lead Acid mode (24V) charges up to 29.4V

I would get an iCharger DUO instead. ALot better for testing large batteries compare to the Imax.... You will cry when you realize how slow it will go with the iMax and only 6A

Thanks for the advice.

Extra questions...

Am I best to charge/test each LEV40 cell individually, or can I go 6 cells in series, which would obviously cut down the time to get through the 80 cells in total. I ask because I want to make sure I adequately test each cell, to identify any cells that have issues.

Also, I know nothing about aSkyRC IMAX B6AC V2... how does it monitor each cell in a 6s setup? Does it have BMS style cabling to monitor?

Imax B6ac?
It has the connector for every 2s...6s as JST XH.
It looks at every cell, you can display it.

You can't really do this with the B6AC V2. It's discharge/test capabilities are severely limited to 2A and 5W, whatever comes first. These 40Ah cells hold 150Wh or so and that means a single cell will take easily 30 or 40 hours or more, depending on their remaining capacity. You can put six in series and test them in series, but it will take six times as long so you aren't saving any time.

DarkRaven said:

You can't really do this with the B6AC V2. It's discharge/test capabilities are severely limited to 2A and 5W, whatever comes first. These 40Ah cells hold 150Wh or so and that means a single cell will take easily 30 or 40 hours or more, depending on their remaining capacity. You can put six in series and test them in series, but it will take six times as long so you aren't saving any time.

Click to expand...

You are correct, i didn't see his cell type. Additionally, you have a 50 W Charging limit on the B6, and i use to stay away from this since the heating of the casing is quite noticeable. On higher charging loads, i sometimes feed the B6 mit an external ol' Laptop powersupply, then i have its losses outside of the B6 casing.

Additionally, i have built an "Extender", wich will connect between the B6 and the Battery, and it measures the B6 discharge current, and loads another 9 times of this current externally by a vented cooler. I needed this for car battery checking, and despite it was designed for 12 Volt only, it does work on 6 S as well. Good ol Hardware...

Except that, the B6 provides enough nice features for 6s Loading, and it seems to be balancing all time, not only at the end of loading in the 4.1 + Voltage. Negative is, that you cannot change the discharge/Charge limits, they are fixed to the chemival type you have to choose.

Last anchor could be stawels flashing software

https://github.com/stawel/cheali-ch...W-RC_2.00-e10.3.12-20160613_atmega32.bin.sha1

There you can get everything you like, mostly.

Thanks for the input folks, very much appreciated.

For those of you that are using DC to DC charger units (like the iCharger DUO), what type of battery are you using as the 'source' for DC power?

I'm assuming it is a car battery or something like that... does it matter, as I have a couple of VRLA batteries and figured I could put them to use. Thoughts?

You can use any type of battery within the voltage specification of the charger. The usable feature set will then depend on what type of battery you are actually using. Using the 4010 Duo as an example, it's 9V to 50V. If you want the full power output though you need a high voltage battery or several in series, like 48V, because otherwise the maximum power will be limited by the input current of 65A. The batteries then have to be able to supply the current you need and same for regenerative discharging you need a battery that can be charged with relatively high currents.

Lead acid batteries will work but keep in mind that they usually don't like being cycled. Use deep cycle AGM lead acid batteries. Flooded batteries, like car batteries, I would only use on single occasions when nothing else is available.

I also have 48Vdc power supplies to power mine, a 350W fanless one and a 1kW industrial one from Meanwell. When using a power supply you can't use the regenerative discharge to source obviously but you can still do it using the second channel.

I have a 40amp laboratory power supply, so that will likely be my starting point. I will also look around to see if I can find a deep cycle battery for a reasonable price.

I have also been looking at the EV-Peak A8 which seems interesting, so will compare against the Duo and make a decision.

Thanks again for your advice.

Changed my mind and I am going to go for the EV Peak A8 charger.



The A8 has loads of features, including BMS style monitoring, and a bonus of charging up to8S which will fit perfectly for the LEV40 batteries as they come in packs of 8. Not sure if anyone else on the forum has ever used an A8, but must thankCarel for his guidance.

Looks decent, similar to the iCharger 308 Duo, just with one channel instead of two and an added touch screen. Never heard of the brand before though.

Yes, I hadn't heard of it either. But based on Carel's feedback and in reading the specs it looks good to me.