Charge Faster your battery?

[Chrisjones]

Hello,

Looking for ideas to charge our wheels faster. i've seen that charge doctor 2 seems to be able to charge faster with two charger but to me (newbie) this still sounds a bit complex.

I got an ACM16 and an MCM4HS and looking at the charger it's exactly the same: DC 67.2     1.75A

So i guess my MCM340 is charging in about 2h30min, the ACM16 820mh is charging in about 6h.

I am looking to possibly do a long trip with one of those but don't know yet which one i will take. I will probably do a lot of km and will need to charge on the road finding points to recharge, probably while visiting the area.

MCM 340 will get me probably 25km-30km max (90kg + bag 5-8 kg) and then 2,5h to recharge fully

ACM16 i believe will get me around 50km but will then require 6h to recharge fully (as mentioned in specs)

Looking for doing 70-80km

Anyone with a nice solution (no spare battery) would be great to be able to charge ACM16 faster.

Would it be possible to use another charger for the ACM? If so what do you recommend? (i don't have spare battery)

Or any other idea?

Thanks a lot for your inputs/ideas

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Cloud]

First of all, if you are 90kg plus a bag, you may or may not be able to squeeze 50 km out of your ACM, but you will probably get 45. Not sure how you will solve the goal of 70-80km with no extra battery or recharging on the way. If you can find room inside your acm, you might be able to add a battery from your Mcm , it might work, normally gotway has spare connectors on the charge side, but if you dont feel comfortable making those mods, then you are better off staying away from it

About the charger, people use faster (higher amperage) chargers, but i am not sure that gotway can take these ampers. In terms of polarity, you coukd use kingsing chargers, and pretty much all other unicycle chargers out there where the 3 prong connector is the same ( even though just in case id check polarity with a voltmeter before plugging in if you are dealing with an unknown charger). 

However - this is my experience - i used kingsong' 4A charger with msuper2 and it worked ok. But when i plugged in the 5A charger i use for kingsong, it messed up the bms in one of the Gotway's batteries to the point that it heated up and was probably ready to blow up. So please be careful - i dont think gotway batteries can take fast chargers. generic 2A charger is probably ok. But higher not sure. Even though the batteries charged with 4A fine, i am not sure if that wouuld mess them up , had it used it longer.

Other, nore knowlegeable  people on the forum might be able to advise how much current Gotway BMS can take

[Keith]

There is nothing in the least complicated about using two chargers (which you already have) in a charge doctor, you just plug them both into one side of the charge doctor and the other side into the wheel. The 3.5Amps you'll get from two 1.75Amp chargers will be fine on the ACM16, it is a bit high for the 340Wh battery.

i have only got the one charger but the 2nd one goes into the socket on the right in the picture below:

[Cloud]

@Keith where did you get the charge doctor with 2 ports? I envy you:) mine ( white one) onky has one port for charger(((

the battery can take the fast charger, but are you sure bms can? As soon as i plugged in 5A, some time wihin 2 hrs, the bms died in one of the batteries in the  msuper 2 (680wh) 

[Keith]

On 21 August 2016 at 4:00 PM, Cloud said:

@Keith where did you get the charge doctor with 2 ports? I envy you:)

I think they come as standard now, I've had mine a couple of months.

Correction: Just checked: http://hobby16.neowp.fr/buy/ the two port one is an extra €2 so it was a no brainier to pay the extra for it.

On 21 August 2016 at 4:00 PM, Cloud said:

the battery can take the fast charger, but are you sure bms can? As soon as i plugged in 5A, some time wihin 302 hrs, the bms died in one of the batteries in the  msuper 2 (680wh) 

Yes but @Chrisjones states that his chargers are 1.75Amps, I can't believe an 820Wh battery won't be capable of handling 3.5A and in all probability there are 2 packs with 2 BMS so neither will take more than the standard 1.75A.

[TremF]

43 minutes ago, Cloud said:

@Keith where did you get the charge doctor with 2 ports? I envy you:) mine ( white one) onky has one port for charger(((

the battery can take the fast charger, but are you sure bms can? As soon as i plugged in 5A, some time wihin 2 hrs, the bms died in one of the batteries in the  msuper 2 (680wh) 

Charge Doctor V2... When I told the guy I wanted to use two chargers for fast charge he said he would send the 2 input version. I only use it for my ACM if I want a fast turnaround with the charge.

http://hobby16.neowp.fr/category/charge-doctor-en/

[Cloud]

31 minutes ago, Keith said:

I think they come as standard now, I've had mine a couple of months.

Yes but @Chrisjones states that his chargers are 1.75Amps, I can't believe an 820Wh battery won't be capable of handling 3.5A and in all probability there are 2 packs with 2 BMS so neither will take more than the standard 1.75A.

I see, i lucked out with mine then lol

yes standard gotway chargers are 1.75. However, batteries in gotway have parralel connection which means that right now each of his two batteries is receiving 0.87A. If 3.5a charger is used, each bms will start seeing 1.75a - this is a 100% increase. Kingsong battery bms easily takes it but im not sure gotway's can, since mine died after seeing 2.5A though...also, at least in msuper2 there are no fuses on the battery ( perhaps there are other ways of limiting current on the bms?)

But i guess since @TremF uses 3.5a, it should be ok....

[EUC Extreme]

My solution is like this.  Of course, the battery is 850wh.

I do not download any such smaller standard battery.

[esaj]

Looking at Vee's picture and the EC3 (or is it EC5?) -connector reminded me that GX16-3's aren't rated for higher than 5A, so going above that, probably the charge port -connector needs to be also replaced. Or, it could work just fine (the 5A limit might be a bit conservative), although to play it safe, EC3's are rated for something like 60A and EC5's something like 100-120A.

[EUC Extreme]

I forgot to mention that I have changed the batteries charging all the cables bigger.
Also, the connector is EC5, because I have a lot of them, and it is a good handy connector.

[Cloud]

32 minutes ago, esaj said:

Looking at Vee's picture and the EC3 (or is it EC5?) -connector reminded me that GX16-3's aren't rated for higher than 5A, so going above that, probably the charge port -connector needs to be also replaced. Or, it could work just fine (the 5A limit might be a bit conservative), although to play it safe, EC3's are rated for something like 60A and EC5's something like 100-120A.

So why did the bms get messed up on one of the batteries when i plugged in 5a charger into the msuper2 680wh? Maybe it had nothing to do with the current, and the bms just broke for whatever other reason?

also, not sure what the connector is called, but on the charging side msuper 2 has very cheap flimsy connectors, with very thin profile conductor at the connection - same connectors they use for cheap 3V wire lights. 

[esaj]

1 hour ago, Cloud said:

So why did the bms get messed up on one of the batteries when i plugged in 5a charger into the msuper2 680wh? Maybe it had nothing to do with the current, and the bms just broke for whatever other reason?

Hard to say for sure, could be something like a sudden high current spike destroying some components or melting solder connections, or high voltage spike destroying components or... I don't know

 

1 hour ago, Cloud said:

also, not sure that the connector is called, but on the charging side msuper 2 has very cheap flimsy connectors, with very thin profile conductor at the connection - same connectors they use for cheap wire lights. 

Not sure what the connectors were then, JST-RCY maybe?

It's very small (can't really tell the dimension from that picture), and capable of something like maybe 2A continuous.

Or JST SM, slightly larger, but probably not capable of much current either (couple of amps?)

 

 

[Keith]

25 minutes ago, esaj said:

It's very small (can't really tell the dimension from that picture), and capable of something like maybe 2A continuous?

I wouldn't want to put any more than 2A through them they are very small - here is my 2 cents worth on their size:

 

[US69]

when i upgraded my Ks14 from 340 to 680wh by 1radwerkstatt and i told him about charging with 4 amps.by charge doctor..he warned me to go any higher!!! he is selling 6 and 8 amp chargers, also, but is mentioning on his website, that the cables, charge connecter AND BMS programming has to be changed in case of using these!

i do not think that it is any other on Gotway...

so better stay away from any higher than 4/5 amps!

[esaj]

35 minutes ago, Keith said:

I wouldn't want to put any more than 2A through them they are very small - here is my 2 cents worth on their size:

Yes, they are very small, and I think the 2A is pretty much the absolute maximum for them... Sorry for going a bit off-topic, but after seeing that, I just had to scrounge around what connectors I have and take a similar scale-image:

Colt-lighter & 2€ -coin used for scale.

 

These aren't actually everything (I left out at least Abikos, some DC-connectors, screw terminals and different pin-count/angled versions of some connectors)...   Once you get around fiddling with electronics, you suddenly find out that you need a heck of a lot of different connectors   And there's a gazillion different kinds.

[TremF]

Seeing as there are a few posts now and others aren't really answering the OP's question regarding fast charging the ACM I will confirm - 

I use two standard Gotway chargers connected to a Charge Doctor V2 to fast charge my ACM and have had no problems. I only fast charge when required though. If I have time I just use the one.

@Chrisjones As you already have two chargers you just need the Charge Doctor V2...  http://hobby16.neowp.fr/category/charge-doctor-en/ 

[Cloud]

@esaj wow, its a universe of connectors!!! Its so easy, just ask you a question and you produce an encyclopedic response with a systematic classification!!!

yes the picture you posted is the connector on the charging side. So if it only takes 2a why do we want to run 4 or 3.5A thru it?

[esaj]

19 minutes ago, Cloud said:

yes the picture you posted is the connector on the charging side. So if it only takes 2a why do we want to run 4 or 3.5A thru it?

Probably to charge faster?  It's not like it's going to explode the second you put too much current through it (well, enough current, and yes, that could maybe happen ), but it might heat up considerably... At least 1RadWerkstatt was selling some super-fast (6A? 8A? Don't remember the specifics...) chargers for their large battery packs (16S5P or something like that) for MSuper V2's, but they specifically said that the charging connectors & splitting wires must be replaced also (and came with the charger).

Edit: Here's the JST SM specs, it says 3A max:

https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/JSTSM.pdf

 

[Cloud]

9 minutes ago, esaj said:

Probably to charge faster?  

Good answer

10 minutes ago, esaj said:

Edit: Here's the JST SM specs, it says 3A max:

https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/JSTSM.pdf

 

Thank you. What i get from this whole thread is that i wont be charging unmodified gotway with anything higher than 4 for short periods of time and nothing higher than 2A -3.5A unattended.

[HEC]

48 minutes ago, esaj said:

Edit: Here's the JST SM specs, it says 3A max:

https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/JSTSM.pdf

3A though also 250V (both DC as well as AC) so in theory at 60 - 70V it would withstand a bit larger currents although not officially rated as such ...

[esaj]

8 minutes ago, HEC said:

3A though also 250V (both DC as well as AC) so in theory at 60 - 70V it would withstand a bit larger currents although not officially rated as such ...

The voltage rating is usually for strike-through (ie. the connector can arc between the terminals above those voltages). It's always not just about the power dissipation (well, yes it is, but it's the voltage drop over the component, not the voltage of the entire circuitry)... Think about fuses, they blow at certain current, regardless of voltage.

http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/51366/how-does-a-fuse-blow-at-its-current-rating-regardless-of-voltage

 

[HEC]

1 minute ago, esaj said:

The voltage rating is usually for strike-through (ie. the connector can arc between the terminals above those voltages). It's always not just about the power dissipation... Think about fuses, they blow at certain current, regardless of voltage.

That is indeed correct. And while it doesn't mean that if you get slightly over the rated values that it will instantly "explode" / melt the plug it's of course better not to relay on such unknown margins and replace both plugs as well as leads if you plan regularly use the faster chargers.

[Chrisjones]

On 8/21/2016 at 9:51 PM, TremF said:

Seeing as there are a few posts now and others aren't really answering the OP's question regarding fast charging the ACM I will confirm - 

I use two standard Gotway chargers connected to a Charge Doctor V2 to fast charge my ACM and have had no problems. I only fast charge when required though. If I have time I just use the one.

@Chrisjones As you already have two chargers you just need the Charge Doctor V2...  http://hobby16.neowp.fr/category/charge-doctor-en/ 

@TremF Thanks for your answer, that's exactly what i wanted to know. Can you share how long it takes to fully charge your battery (as well as capacity?)

I have the 820wh (6h charging fully), i hope to reduce the charging time but can you tell me by how much? 

Thanks a lot!

[sbouju]

On 21/08/2016 at 9:51 PM, TremF said:

Seeing as there are a few posts now and others aren't really answering the OP's question regarding fast charging the ACM I will confirm - 

I use two standard Gotway chargers connected to a Charge Doctor V2 to fast charge my ACM and have had no problems. I only fast charge when required though. If I have time I just use the one.

@Chrisjones As you already have two chargers you just need the Charge Doctor V2...  http://hobby16.neowp.fr/category/charge-doctor-en/ 

I do exactly the same with my Gotway MSuper2.

Note that if the ChargeDoctor2 is a very interesting tool for doing that, its main advantage is that it stops the charging process at a setting of the charging current, for example at 1A (= the default setting). But a simple "Y" adapter (the GX16-3 one , the upper on the joined picture) can be used as well, for the simple purpose of just charging one wheel with two chargers.

[TremF]

13 hours ago, Chrisjones said:

@TremF Thanks for your answer, that's exactly what i wanted to know. Can you share how long it takes to fully charge your battery (as well as capacity?)

I have the 820wh (6h charging fully), i hope to reduce the charging time but can you tell me by how much? 

Thanks a lot!

Hi Chris. To be honest with you I haven't timed the charges. I have the 820wh version too and I am pretty sure the quick charge is at least half the time. It definitely isn't as long as charging with one charger which is 6-7 hours. I have only commuted to and from work so far this week so my battery doesn't need charging yet but i'll try and get it as low as possible and do a quick charge and get back to you.

It's definitely worth getting the Charge Doctor V2 seeing as you already have the chargers