Are Zippy Lipos safe with a Castle MMM Speedy?

[Pdelcast]

Originally Posted by fastbaja5b

What castle standpoint? I can't even get a reply to an email from Castle support!

Dude,

What's your question? I've gone back through your posts, and I don't really see a question anywhere...

Patrick

[lincpimp]

Originally Posted by Pdelcast

Dude,

What's your question? I've gone back through your posts, and I don't really see a question anywhere...

Patrick

Are zippy lipos good enough for a MMM... Kinda open-ended, huh?!

Basically will a lipo rated for 100amps at 6s be ok in the flux, geared with the 25t pinion?

My experience says no... Maybe for a run or two, but not with good results...

[Pdelcast]

Originally Posted by lincpimp

Are zippy lipos good enough for a MMM... Kinda open-ended, huh?!

Basically will a lipo rated for 100amps at 6s be ok in the flux, geared with the 25t pinion?

My experience says no... Maybe for a run or two, but not with good results...

I already said in another post that as a rule, Castle Creations does not comment on the performance, usability, fitness of purpose, etc. for other brands.

Besides, I don't have any "Zippy" batteries to test with. I haven't tested "Zippy" batteries. So I don't have any idea whether "Zippy" batteries are fit for the purpose of setups on the MMM. I would also imagine it would matter (A LOT!) what kind of setup you ran (pinion, overall gear ratio, etc.) that you ran (as it is with ALL batteries...)

My suggestion -- run the smallest pinion that gives you the performance you are looking for. And don't try to push anything too hard. At the power levels the MMM runs at, bad things will happen very quickly...

Patrick

[BrianG]

It's just a matter of having champagne taste on a beer budget. Way back in the day, I used to work in car audio. People would spends thousands on the amps, speakers, and head unit only to skimp on wiring. That would be like having a 500HP engine in your car with a cardboard toilet paper tube driveshaft.

[shizzon]

I would say that with most things electrical the performance will be governed by your power source. For car audio this would be a combination of the alternator, batteries and wiring. For rc cars the battery for the most part as most packs are equipped with leads that can handle the currents expected of the battery, some even bigger than needed I would say.

I have learned the hard way with batteries, the 3s maxamps packs that i bought couldnt even hold up to a slash/vxl combo. though i did manage to find a setup that had low enough amp draw for them, one is currently taped to my DX2.0...LOL, 4 runs on it and voltage hasnt gone down a bit.

[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

[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"

[MrMin]

I can understand your statement, but that is purely speculative basd on your experience. I also run zippy-h's and zippy-r's and think they are great and "believe"(as in religion) that they hold their voltage. There are zippy-h, zippy-r, zippy-ec,flightmax etc... so many flavours. You should also test the batts in lab to verify all this.
Thing is, I have verified that Patrick is telling the TRUTH. when you brake you use the battery to dump 500+ watts of power in 1-2 seconds. If the batts(or something else) cannot sink this power then the ESC will blow up in nice little smoky plastic pieces.

Actually, what i'm trying to get to is if a batt is bad then it should not trash your ESC, but that is fact because the mmm uses the batts to dump load(which is very common practice) from the esc acting like a generator when braking. I believe there should be a extra protection circuit to give the bad batts a helping hand and then bad batts just give bad performance, not smoked plastic.

Patrick is trying to offer part of the solution via a ripple monitoring solution firmware upgrade, so PLEASE dont think he is not willing to help.

[kvrc]

mr min i am not just posting my experience but that of about 10+ people who actually race 1/8 buggys. i still find it funny that the wimpy mamba max can handle pretty powerful motors on 4s with no problem but the original monsters didn't.
yes i know the monster will allow more current through but that still dosent cut it in my book. all i am saying is the zippy h and r 5000 packs are definitly good enough for racing a 1/8 scale buggy. the question is were the first gen monsters. i think from all the problems they had the answer is pretty obvious.
i myself run a mamba max with an extra 25v novak cap on 4s. when i was choosing a new esc 4 months back i was afraid to get a monster and opted for the tried and true mamba and i dont regret it a bit.

[MrMin]

I agree. I also think zippy-r's are very impressive. The mmm is more powerful than the mm, but had some teething problems(which seem to be gone now) and now is pretty reliable. The mmm does not fail more than other (much more expensive) esc's. Chinese alternatives are coming out such as the 150A etc... i think the mmm should really have some more protection circuitry to prevent this, but IT really was expecting a much more luxurious environment.

I think the components are running nearing their limit on 6s, only when you brake, when and it blasts energy into your batts too fast(faster than it can absorb) then it will kill the capacitors(ripple current) and ESC FET circuitry up in smoke it will go. Fact is that the mmm requires good (expensive) low resistance good chemistry batteries because that is what it is expecting in order to operate.

I think castle is only saying that he would prefer it if you didn't use cheapo (not necessarily zippy) batteries because they do not want to replace ESCs exploding due to this. I'm personally working on a protection circuit to protect my mmm's just in case.

Less is more. more or less.

[shaunjohnson]

just when i thought zippies were good (well i knew the R-s were ok lol)
i was gonna go for a couple of flightmax cells.
it's not fair that the best lipo's are the most expensive :(

[lincpimp]

Originally Posted by shaunjohnson

just when i thought zippies were good (well i knew the R-s were ok lol)
i was gonna go for a couple of flightmax cells.
it's not fair that the best lipo's are the most expensive :(

Nothing wrong with zippies, especially considering the price... If i was not good at buying lightly used enerland packs I would definately buy zippies. My only issue is that all of my setups demand the best lipos.

[Lee Estingoy]

Guys,

We're in a tough spot here. We have to live in the sandbox that everybody plays in. We can't call out products as being good or bad. In most cases, a battery will work as well as any other. You guys are not talking about most cases in these applications. These are the highest power setups in RC brushless at the moment, and then you guys are pushing them to the bleeding edge with your gearing.

Let's compare this to full size racing. Few expect to put lowest-bidder parts in their race cars. There's a reason racing is so expensive, high end performance requires that every component in the system be of equally matched capabilities.

I think all modelers learn the lesson that when you buy cheap you generally wind up buying twice. Unfortunately that lesson is often an expensive one. We are modelers too, we work very hard to bring top notch components to the market at a great price for value received.

All that we can say is that not all batteries are equal. Price is sometimes, but not always, an indicator of a battery pack's ability. There's generally plenty of guys on line who have experience -- both good and bad with cells. Unfortunately, we can't be the ones to comment on that.

The Monster setup will take all the power that you can give it. We suggest using the biggest, baddest batteries you can possibly put in the thing. If you aren't sure of the abilities of your packs, start small and work up. Start with 4S and a small pinion. Racers don't start out in Top Fuel or Formula One either!

Hope this makes sense.

Now for the guy who wants to put 1,800 mAh cells in his truck and call it good: I want to put Brembo red brake calipers on my Toyota minivan. Think they'll make it look faster?

Lee