Are Zippy Lipos safe with a Castle MMM Speedy?

[shizzon]

Originally Posted by lincpimp

Damn, why is it whenever we talk about poor battery purchases maxamps always comes up... Someone should give them a break, it is not like they are making much money

At this point i would say that buying those batteries have been my # 1 regret since getting back into RC, that and the MMM i just fried the other day because of sheer stupidity!!!

[lincpimp]

Originally Posted by shizzon

At this point i would say that buying those batteries have been my # 1 regret since getting back into RC, that and the MMM i just fried the other day because of sheer stupidity!!!

Right there with you dude. I bought alot of maxamps stuff before I finally realized that flashy ads do not mean good products... I have had much better success buying used enerland packs from the plane guys. That is sad...

I have cooked a few escs, all in good fun!!!

[Finnster]

My little rant was more against HPI's specs, advertising and overall lack of detail in their advice for the Flux. For a RTR basher vehicle that will be sold to a lot of inexperienced people, the lack of good advice, and worse, the promotion of bad advice is irresponsible to their customers IMO and will cost everyone a lot of money needlessly.

However, the comments I see coming out of Castle are also confusing.
This is all the relevant specs I see of the MMM combo the Flux is based on:

ESC:
Cells: 6s LiPo
Continuous: 120A* (I guess they've done away with the ambiguous "More than you can handle" )
Motor:
Max Input Volts: 25.2
Amp Rating*: 120

The Flux manual just says upto 3S batts and recommends 25C batts. No where does capacity get mentioned. CC's site says little about batteries other than Brian @ Tanic can make you A123 packs (which I swear to God at one point I saw people blaming A123s for MMM poofing back at the v1 era.)

Not only that, you get information from CC guys themselves that further the confusion:

Previous post

Sorry guys,

I think this was a misunderstanding on the part of one of our Tech support guys -- he wasn't aware of the newer Maxamps packs that could handle more than 15C.

The official stand of Castle is that any pack that can handle 75A continuous, and 150A peak is sufficient for use with the MMM.

Austin -- Sorry about that! You are right, there was a misunderstanding and it wasn't meant to target Maxamps in particular.

Patrick

Patrick del Castillo
President, Principle Engineer
Castle Creations

So that was a little while ago, but the same problem is still on going. The MMM manual says nothing other than to look for "low resistance" cells, and not use Tamiya connectors, and better batts give better results.

Nowhere, nowhere does anyone give some useful information in an absolute sense. Everything is relativistic. Todays "cheap" cells (like zippies and others) would have been kings just a few years ago when the MM came out. Then the expensive packs were 20C. So are 20C FP and TP packs crap now and will blow up a MMM? Seriously.

How is someone just going to a LHS (or even running one) supposed to make good decisions? Not only are these batts prolly not even available at LHSs, but the people working there are not likely experts on highend lipos and "ripple voltages" in ESCs. On top of that you have CC guys running around the internet saying you can void your warr by using sh1tty cells, but won't say what are the sh1tty cells and which are not.

By reading what Patrick wrote once upon a time, a 10C/15C TrueRc 8000 mah pack should be plenty for a MMM. Those are cheap cells, prolly fairly high resistance, but they meet the specs. So does a 30C/50C 2500 mah pack. Really? I have one from Neu I use on a CRT.5, but I wouldn't trust it on a Flux w/ a 1Y on 6S. (and happens to put out no more power than a 25C 2100 pack from zippy on the ET...)


Ok, I understand why CC wants to not disqualify some vendors packs, and can't be expected to test every cell out there. But, that doesn't mean they should just then be vague and expect people to listen to others online (who may or may not be FOS.)
Why can't CC at least have a few "Tested and Approved Packs" list to go with the hardware. I've worked with a lot of computer components, and at least they give a few part#s that have been tested and known to work. An end user can find those, or try to use his own that meet the same specs, but its considered untested at that point.
EG.: A motherboard maker: MB x123 has been tested with Ram modules:
Patriot #23423 1gb CL2 168pin 3.3V
Crucial #34534 512mb CL2
Infineon #234234 1gb CL2
Etc etc.
They are not endorsing or slandering any particular Ram, but at least give end users information and practical specs and examples to go by. Right now information just seems dodgy. "Oh, your MMM flamed out on XyZ batts? What C rating? 22C?! Ohh... Yeah you should know not to use those. Too bad you just ruined $200 worth of equipment... Better luck next time. Make sure you spend a lot more on the next ones"

[Pdelcast]

Finnster --

Unfortunately, there are literally hundreds of thousands of combinations of pinions, spurs, batteries, tires, etc... that we can't "rubber stamp" every possible combination -- or even a subset of 'em.

Use common sense. Don't gear for 120mph on a 16lb truck. Don't start with the largest pinion you can find because "it'll be really fast dude!" Check you temps after runs, and make sure you aren't exceeding safe temperatures.

You could potentially damage ANY ESC and motor WITH ANY BATTERY if you are not careful with the setup.

So testing and approving a list of cells would be useless - - - I can hear the tech support call now...

Caller: "I was using an approved battery and the MMM failed"
Tech support: "What was the gear ratio you were using?"
Caller: "Oh, I was using a 35 tooth pinion and a 35 tooth spur, so 1:1"
<Sound of the Tech Support guy beating his head against the keyboard>


And it's not that "Brand A" 30C batteries always work, and "Brand C" 30C batteries never work -- that's the point I've been trying to make. Pretty much any batteries will work if you use them within their limits. It's just that the limits change from battery type to battery type.

Our return rates on the MMM are EXTREMELY LOW, so very very few people are having issues of any kind. It may seem high, but we have shipped almost 12,000 Mamba Monsters to date -- and have seen VERY VERY few problems.

If you are careful with your setups, measure temperatures, run conservative gearing, you won't have problems.

If you constantly push the system, don't measure temps, and abuse everything, you will have problems.

It's that simple.