Charging Procedure

[tomjasz]

should

 

[PCeBiker]

You know, your battery charger should just NEVER arc when you are connecting a battery to it. The cost of the parts to prevent that from happening in a battery charger is less than $1.

I had the first portable CD player available. A Sony Discman that I bought ~1981.
It was a $500 Walkman, and the proprietary 9 volt 1 amp power supply for it was $50.

More than a few people didn't want to spend the $50 for the Sony power supply, so they bought a $10 off the shelf power supply.

When they plugged in that power supply, they wrecked their $500 Walkman.

Sony in their brilliant marketing plan, decided to reverse the polarity of the 9v barrel plug on the power supply to positive ground.

A simple 10 cent diode would protect the CD player from reverse polarity, but Sony didn't want to do that.

They wanted to sell you another CD player.


It might have been a 2 amp power supply?
The thing really sucked power.
It would kill the 6 C batteries in two hours.

 

[tomjasz]

I had the first portable CD player available. A Sony Discman that I bought ~1981.
It was a $500 Walkman, and the proprietary 9 volt 1 amp power supply for it was $50.

More than a few people didn't want to spend the $50 for the Sony power supply, so they bought a $10 off the shelf power supply.

When they plugged in that power supply, they wrecked their $500 Walkman.

Sony in their brilliant marketing plan, decided to reverse the polarity of the 9v barrel plug on the power supply to positive ground.

A simple 10 cent diode would protect the CD player from reverse polarity, but Sony didn't want to do that.

They wanted to sell you another CD player.

Oh man, early adopter here too. I’d forgotten the punishing pricing. And how much of a market leader that product was. A couple of decades of innovation and WOW! Leaps and bounds.

 

[PCeBiker]

I bought the first yellow waterproof cassette player a few years later.
The Sony Swim Man for just over $300.
It would play both sides of the tape without having to flip the tape over, so you didn't have to open it up while you were swimming.

 

[PCeBiker]

I still have my Yamaha cassette deck that I cost me $740 in 1984,..



That was the cats ass!!
Next best thing to the Nakamichi Dragon.

I remember the $12,000 Oracle turntable and the $40,000 pair of speakers that came with a sound engineer to set it up for your house.

 

[PCeBiker]

Oh man, early adopter here too. I’d forgotten the punishing pricing. And how much of a market leader that product was. A couple of decades of innovation and WOW! Leaps and bounds.

The CD's were expensive too.
This CD cost me ~$45 and was the only CD that I had for 5 years. Albums were $5-$6
It was one of the first 100 CD's ever produced.



It came with a warning label saying essentially "don't blow up your stereo" lol

My cousin (an electrical engineer) built me a power supply to wire into my car that would power my Discman.

I delivered pizza in a $500 car with $1500 worth of stereo in it.

I pulled up behind a lady at a red light and cranked up the jet flying by. (the part that pops your speakers)
She leaned forward in her seat to look up through the windshield to find the jet, sat back, looked in her mirror, saw me laughing, and started to laugh.

 

[JGcycle]

I delivered pizza in a $500 car with $1500 worth of stereo in it.

Ah, youth. It didn't matter if your car broke down, as long as you had good tunes--all was well.

 

[Abdaddy]

I used bike for charging so much that I don't use my charger much any more.

 

[PCeBiker]

CORRECTION: Boy, did I misremember that video! At the very end, he says to make the wall connection first. Nothing about breaking connections.

I remember watching that video and was hesitating from doing what @Ravi Kempaiah said because my owners manual Specifically said the opposite,..

I have three 48 V batteries, three 48 V chargers, and a 60 V Bench Power Supply that I use the most to charge my batteries.

I now plug in ALL my chargers and the Power Supply in FIRST before connecting any of my batteries.

The Das-Kit charger and battery are fine to be plugged in "incorrectly" and I've never had a spark worth noting.
Except at the outlet when I plug in the chargers. (And I'd much rather have a spark at outlet than right beside the ,..... I mean )

On one of my batteries, if I plug the battery in first, I get One HELL of a 🌩 with a Huge Crack of sound !!


One thing that I did notice is that if the battery is almost fully drained, (~40 V) I get a small orange spark at the battery when I connect the charge plug, so I turn the voltage of my power supply down to about 40 volts before I connect it to the battery, then I get no spark.

The sparks at the outlet are blue.
I think it's an AC vs DC thing ?

@PedalUma,..
I remember when you said that you got sparks if the battery was empty when you connected the battery.

Do you remember what color the spark was?

Mine was orange, but there may have been some Vado smoke in the air (and in my mind) at the time skewing my observations.

I've noticed that my farts fire up different colors too, it depends on what I've been eating.

We call them Blue Angels here in Canada Eh,..

We call out military flight team the Snowbirds.

 

[Slaphappygamer]

Better Snowbirds than nobirds. Maybe nobirds know Snowbirds?

 

[PCeBiker]

There's almost no Snowbirds left.
The fricken planes are from the 60's.
They've had a few crashes and deaths and the fleet has been grounded a few times.

 

[PCeBiker]

My advice would be to make the 110v connection AFTER making the battery side connection when hooking up the charger, and removing the 110v before disconnecting the battery.

WHY? It's about capacitors and the HUGE amount of voltage that may be stored up in them, especially in the older rigs. Once you experience the big lightning bolt and associated POW that may be the result of incorrect connection order, I can pretty much assure you, that you'll NEVER forget that lesson.

I don't care what the instructions say. Capacitors are nothing to mess with......

It's only one of my batteries that goes POW when I plug it in wrong and that's when I plug the battery in first.

I'm pretty sure that the BMS is allowing the battery to reverse charge the capacitors in the charger that gives the CRACK of a spark?


RIP @AHicks
You were a wealth of knowledge and advice and put up with all my nonsense.
Maybe some day I'll wire a temperature sensor from my motor into my KT display in your honor.

 

[6zfshdb]

Over time, those sparks take their toll on connectors. Why beat up a fragile, hard to replace battery connector when AC outlets are cheap and relatively easy to fix.

IMO, manufacturers say to plug in AC first to limit liability should someone get a potentially more severe shock.

 

[il Munduato]

I have one battery that likes to show off and arc when being connected to the charger with a nice . It had a cheap 2.1 charge connection. I split it in two so that the positive and negative get connected independently using bullet connectors and it all but eliminated the arching.
ymmv

 

[Slaphappygamer]

I hd it happen to my Apollo Pro (2019) scooter. When I connected the charger to the battery BEFORE plugging in to the mains, I got a loud pop and no visible spark. It was a different than blowing a capacitor. I know what that sounds like. I plug in to the mains first now and no loud popping.

I was working on another scooter, at the time, and that scooter had to have the charger connected to the battery BEFORE plugging in to the mains. As per the instructions on the charger.

 

[PCeBiker]

It was a different than blowing a capacitor. I know what that sounds like.

I had an old-school Fat Screen TV from the 70's the kept working until about ten years ago.

One day I heard a Huge POP followed by a Screaming whistling sound like those whistling rocket launching fireworks.

It startled the Living s*it outta me.
I don't remember investigating, but I think it was 45 year old capacitor that died with a Bang ?

 

[Slaphappygamer]

Yes. The pop inside a tv is VERY LOUD. Our tv went out the same way as you described. It was the power board. Scared the crap out of my wife. She was watching tv and I was at work. I proved then replaced the board and got another 5 years out of the 51” TV. A friend of my father in law moved houses and there was an entertainment center built into the was. His 65” tv was too small. He had just got it before he moved. He bought an 80” tv and gave the 65”, for free, to my father in law. That tv made it to us, as my FIL knew we were looking for another tv.

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

The Zen ebikes guy recently posted a very extensive and thoroughly researched "white paper" video on the care and feeding of lithium ion ebike batteries. He has a degree in a related engineering field.

He said to make and break the charging connection at the battery with power to the charger off.

How does an E-bike charger work? [ Video with Animation]

The safety of an E-bike battery is intricately tied to the quality of the charger used. With millions of E-bike chargers on the road, it is important to understand how E-bike chargers work. We put together a video to explain the mechanism like CC-CV, what is a smart charger and how to select the...

electricbikereview.com

CORRECTION: Boy, did I misremember that video! At the very end, he says to make the wall connection first. Nothing about breaking connections.

What we have found is that every BMS and charger is built differently.
Some BMS have pre-charge circuits, and many don't. This changes the equation.
If the connectors don't have arc protection and BMS doesn't have a pre-charge circuit, then it is good to connect to the battery first and then to the outlet.
I think we should have a video about these nuances, as many chargers don't come up with proper instructions.

 

[Nvreloader]

Ravi
How is the average rider/bike owner know which is what type of BMS/chargers are?

 

[Slaphappygamer]

Ravi
How is the average rider/bike owner know which is what type of BMS/chargers are?

A great question. I contacted Ride1Up about the BMS. I specifically asked what its rating was. I got no answer because, I believe, A) they don’t know or B) they know I’m looking to modify my bike in some way. Either way, I got no answer. This leads me to believe that most sellers are selling the bike to you, then it’s all up to you for any needs.