BMS experiences

ESK8 Electronics
1

Hi guys,

Have done a few battery packs before for other uses, but lipo. Am looking into doing a 18650 liion pack for a board 10S3P (VTC-6 cells). Just have a few more questions left before starting, and browsing through the forums I didn’t find a definitive answer to this.

What are your experiences on charging these larger (series) packs?

  • Splitting into two 5S packs and leaving the balancing to a normal li-ion charger?
  • Using a 10S BMS for balancing and powering with a dumb power supply?
  • When not using a BMS, you use your VESC for average over- and under voltage protection?

What are your experiences with different BMS’s and which are the good ones?

This one any good?

Sorry if this has been posted loads before, couldn’t quite find a topic covering the pro’s and con’s of charging in comparison to the setup of the board.

2

I use the linked 60A BMS on my daily board. I have it set to both charge an discharge through it and it works very well for me. I ordered it here http://www.batterysupports.com/36v-37v-42v-10s-60a-10x-36v-lithium-ion-lipolymer-battery-bms-p-267.html For charging I use a “dumb charger” which is just two notebook power supplies that I -connected in series a couple of years ago and it charges to 41V. It sounds dangerous and “janky” but it works flawlessly.

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I use the linked BMS also, with this dumb charger. No problems at all. Works great!

IMG_20180120_130211
IMG_20180120_1302113281×1846 1.82 MB

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Wow you guys are great! Cheers for the speedy reply! :slight_smile: Looks like the same one I was looking at, cool. Do they actually manage the CC-CV part of the charging in a correct way or have you never really monitored that? And do you manage to put the full power through it? Have you also been using the BMS for a while?

And nah, that power supply sounds good to me. Haha! I’ve bodged some stuff together in the past also. Xbox or server PSU’s work perfectly.

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At the time I put the board together I did not know a whole lot about charging just the voltage and basics so I never really checked if it works as it should. Maybe someone else has done some testing with this. Well the BMS is in use on that board for a little over a year now. I am using 30Q 10S3P so I have the limit set to 45A in VESC so I have never pulled 60A through it, during hard acceleration it does 45A based on ackmaniacs app.