Hi! I’m currently trying to build an electric skateboard.
For the project, I bought a Turnigy Aerodrive SK3 6364 190kv electric motor (all links are
in the bottom), and a Turnigy TrackStar 200amp ESC without being aware of the fact that the ESC was 8s.
I then found a Li-ion battery in some electric scooter I don’t use anymore, and thought I could use that instead of buying a new one. But this battery is 10s Li-ion (36V) and the ESC is 8s LiPo (34V MAX).
The battery fits perfectly for that motor, but apparently not for the ESC.
Does LiPo difference from Li-ion when talking cells, and will this even work in first place?
Thanks in advance, and sorry for my obvious bad knowledge about electronics in general.
Latest I found when someone has attempted to do this is on ebike scene:
But there is a problem: the Talon HV120 is designed for a maximum 12S LiPo battery pack – that’s 50.4v max, as shown on the company’s site here. In the e-bike world, we like to use 14S packs, which are 52v nominal. These have several advantages over using 48v packs (discussed in previous electricbike.com articles). But the problem when using these with the Ascent is that, fully charged, 14S packs put out 58.8v – way above the controller’s 50.4 maximum design spec. After completing the build, I first test-drove my Strive with a half-charged pack (about 50v), and everything worked perfectly. Then, I fully charged the pack for a full off-road test drive the next day. However, when I tried to test the bike on the stand, I found that the motor would apply power for a fraction of a second, then cut out. Let off the throttle, then apply throttle again, and it’d do the same thing. Power would apply for a fraction of a second, then cut off. I thought something was seriously wrong with my kit – I didn’t know about the HV120s voltage limit. After readying up on the controller, I realized that I was probably over the max voltage the controller can handle. An e-mail to Dave DuBose confirmed my intuition, that a 14S lithium pack hot off the charger is just above the voltage limitation for the HV120.
The next days were filled with extensive testing, to learn just where the controller’s high voltage limit lies. I found that you can reliably feed 57.4v to the HV120 and it’ll work perfectly – which is pretty amazing, considering the unit is designed for 50.4v maximum. The HV120 gives status beeps upon power-up that indicate any error condition, as well as telling you how many series cells are in the battery pack you have connected. In the case of my 14S pack at 57.4v, it always gives you 12 beeps – indicating a 12S pack. But this makes sense, as the unit is designed for a 12S pack maximum. If you feed it 58.8v, the controller just beeps twice upon startup. Anyway, 57.4v is the max. The positive side to this is that 57.4v is also, coincidentally, the exact voltage of a 14S pack charged to 90% – so you could implement a regimen of charging your pack to only 90%, which will greatly extend the life of the pack. The downside to this is that sometimes the pack still needs to be fully charged, to balance the cells. Also, you’ll need to purchase a charger that can charge to 90% – either the Luna Advanced Chargers can do this, or the Cycle Satiator from Grin Technologies.
Though controller is Talon ? / Castle creatons and it was stock 12s controller (48v-52v) and max he got was about 57v out of it to make it work.
Im actually surprised it just didnt burn or something but just gave an error code.
Ive heard a lot of people over volt regular ebike controller but with rc stuff it might be a bit different.
So yes, do on your own risks and know that it can go bad.
We can’t tell if it works or not, you should test it!
10S vs 8S is only 8V difference so I don’t think the esc will smoke instantly.
I’ve recently seen someone who connected a 8S battery to a 6S esc with no problems so I should really test it.
Do you have still warranty on the esc? Otherwise you can always send a RMA to hobbyking after the test
I have blown two escs on my quad with over-current of 4As (pulling 16A on a 12A esc). I would assume that going similarly above the max-voltage will do similar.
yeh… amp limit is pretty high already, so lets hope they have designed some headroom for voltage too…
Maybe he can add some caps or something, (if it works at all) to avoid the spikes / voltage fluctuations.
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One more way would be to just cut and resolder connections to make it 8s battery but then the charger wouldnt work and it would cause more custom work, so if it works with 10s battery then that is probably the easiest solution now.
someone on here tried 8s on a 6s esc and got magic smoke.
If you wanna try it, go for it, but prepare to lose your ESC.
If you wanna keep it, don´t use it with higher voltage.
Thanks for all the replies, everyone! The difference from 10s to 8s sounds a bit less risky than 8s to 6s, but I won’t sound like a smart person, I know close to nothing about electronics like these. But if magic smoke is the case, I’m not afraid of losing the ESC, and I’ll test it for science whenever I get time in the upcoming weekend. Updating asap!
Like @TeknoAbu pointed out. The trackstar is rated for 8s lipo. He is talking about 10s lion @ 3.6v per cel. So 33v to 36v. My money would be on this working.
3.6v is just nominal and is close to empty already.
More ‘usable’’ voltage / capacity is at 38-39v or so.
So, he still needs to ‘up it’ for about 5v.
I would recommend to check whenever esc gets hot and so on, when it works… though someone who knows about mosfets and how these rc esc work should step in to describe what might actually fail here.
As @MoeStooge reminds me of here: The battery I’m using is NOT LiPo, and as far as I know, LiPo cells are 4,2V and Li-ion are 3,6V which means, that the difference is technically speaking only 2,4V or…? …am I completely lost right now?
