Bionx Battery problem

MercedesMbBionx

100 µW
Joined
Jun 19, 2013
Messages
9
Hi
Just mountet a used BIONX 48 V system Canbus. from 2011.

The problem is that the battery is totally dead. i think the PCB is burned.
When measure on the battery direct i have 50.5 Volt.
But measure on the wire out from PCB nothing 0 V
The fuse is fine, no problem.
But when plugging in the fuse gives a big spark.

Also when plugging in the Charger Nothing happens. and yes the charger is ok. there is power in the plug

Any idea ? any help greatly appropriated



Ole
 
Hi
Yes i am almost shure that the BMS PCB is burned.

Anyone having a bad 48V BionX battery. Where they are willing to sell the PCB ?

Hope to hear from someone, i dont want to buy a new one :-(

Ole
 
can you take a picture of what you are asking about and post it up here in your thread?

why do you think the BMS is burned up?

did you measure the cell voltages yet?

did the person who sold it to you ever demonstrate that it works and now it doesn't?
 
Hi
It worked for a little while.
But then i found bad connection on the power plug to the motor, i think that caused the problem.
The cell voltage is 50.5 Volt

This is what i need, at least i think i need.


Ole
 
the black cylinder in the corner is a buzzer?

can you back out a little so i can see where the two sets of red and black wires which go to that plug next to the relay go? one goes to the motor and one goes to the battery or to do they run to the charger, or does another wire run to the charger? it looks like the sense wire cable has 20 leads? not sure why so many.

i don't think there is anything wrong with that board. nothing burned that i can see.

can you measure the cell voltages for all 16 channels and post them up here on your thread.

and take a picture of the underside of that pcb and a picture of the front side so we can follow the wiring traces to the components in order to figure out how it works.
 
dnmun said:
the black cylinder in the corner is a buzzer?

can you back out a little so i can see where the two sets of red and black wires which go to that plug next to the relay go? one goes to the motor and one goes to the battery or to do they run to the charger, or does another wire run to the charger? it looks like the sense wire cable has 20 leads? not sure why so many.

i don't think there is anything wrong with that board. nothing burned that i can see.

can you measure the cell voltages for all 16 channels and post them up here on your thread.

and take a picture of the underside of that pcb and a picture of the front side so we can follow the wiring traces to the components in order to figure out how it works.
Hi
Yes black cylinder is buzzer
I can say that when i plug in the fuse there is a serius spark. and the board starts to heat up in the corner not to
When the fuse is in it draws 0.04 Amp = 51 * 0.04 = 2 watt that only heats the board :-(
The cell voltage is as follow
3.7 - 7.5 - 11.4 - 15.2 - 19.1 - 22.9 - 26.8 - 30.7 - 34.6 - 38.6 - 42.5 - 46.5 - 50.4
3.7 - 3.8 - 3.9 - 3.8 - 3.9 - 3.8 - 3.9 - 3.9 - 3.9 - 4.0 - 3.9 - 3.9 - 3.9

2013-06-20 19.30.29.jpg

2013-06-20 19.31.32.jpg

2013-06-20 19.30.43.jpg
 
it should not spark when you connect the fuse. where is the heat coming from?

do you have the diode tester function on your DVM? we can try testing the mosfets that are surface mounted there behind the plug where the battery and the motor wires plug in. there are 4 of them in those little silver boxes soldered to the surface.

first lemme know where you can feel the heat and how much? does it come from the little resistors and transistors where the sense wire cable plugs in?

this is not your ordinary BMS.
 
i could not google up that black box which i think is a relay but may be something else. labeled WE 7443553300 but it has L300 printed next to it so maybe it is just some kinda choke.

if you unplug the white plug from the BMS, which would remove the motor connector, does it still spark when you connect the fuse?

when we know where that heat is coming from then we can form an idea of what is causing it. the spark anyway.
 
dnmun said:
it should not spark when you connect the fuse. where is the heat coming from?

do you have the diode tester function on your DVM? we can try testing the mosfets that are surface mounted there behind the plug where the battery and the motor wires plug in. there are 4 of them in those little silver boxes soldered to the surface.

first lemme know where you can feel the heat and how much? does it come from the little resistors and transistors where the sense wire cable plugs in?

this is not your ordinary BMS.

Yes i have a diode tester.

this is not your ordinary BMS. What do you mean ? this is my only not working battery :-(

The Heat is coming from this corner.
heat.jpg
 
does the heat come from that black short can or the silver cans on top with the 47 on them (capacitors) or does it come from one of the IC like U100 or the other transistors or ICs on the underside in that corner. you should be able to feel them with your finger and if it is hot to the touch you will know which one.
 
dnmun said:
does the heat come from that black short can or the silver cans on top with the 47 on them (capacitors) or does it come from one of the IC like U100 or the other transistors or ICs on the underside in that corner. you should be able to feel them with your finger and if it is hot to the touch you will know which one.

You are Rigth, it is from the IC on the other side of the board, just below the "black short can"
 
the one labeled U100 or the other one with 18 pins where it says R124?

also i think the short black can may be two small primary lithium batteries stacked one on top of the other and there is a + printed there so look for a - also and we can check that voltage with the voltmeter.
 
dnmun said:
the one labeled U100 or the other one with 18 pins where it says R124?

also i think the short black can may be two small primary lithium batteries stacked one on top of the other and there is a + printed there so look for a - also and we can check that voltage with the voltmeter.

It is the 18 pins that's get hot

I can not measure any voltage in that little battery, and it does not seams that a + is printed anywhere
 
i think it is a capacitor too and the + is just to allow the assemblers to know polarity. the + is on pcb next to the silver leg that comes out the side.

hot is not good. i cannot follow the traces to it from your picture. they covered the top with goop so no way to know the part number either.

when you look at the legs and how they attach to the traces. do all the legs go into one trace that is wide and connects almost all the legs on one side or do they run off separately?

if you can, move the light so there is not so much reflection and get a close up picture showing the traces there we might be able to identify what it does. 18 pins is more than a voltage regulator though. maybe the traces will help identify it.

but while the fuse is out we can try to measure those mosfets too, with the diode tester. there are four of the them labeled Q1-Q4 with two on each side. there is a wide trace running up to and underneath them. you can see where they have test points labeled that allow you to put the probe of the voltmeter into the trace through the shellac covering everything.

i think the TP1 is the drain of the output mosfets. so use the diode tester function on your voltmeter to test. it sends out a small 1A voltage and if the red probe is on the anode of the diode and the black probe is on the cathode then the current will flow through the diode and you can read the diode forward bias in millivolts.

a diode conducts in one direction so if you see a diode forward bias it will be in the range of 200-500mV. that would mean the diode is conducting. if you reverse the probes then the diode should show open circuit and meter will be off scale.

if the diode is shorted, or if you are measuring a wire that conducts then it will appear as 0V or very low volts.like 01 or similar. make sense?

so those four mosfets have a drain and source leg. the body diode of an nchannel mosfet conducts when the red probe is on the source leg and the black probe is on the drain leg. when you measure the body diode in the mosfet you can tell if the mosfet is still ok or has shorted out.

those wide traces carry the current to the mosfets from the battery and then out to the motor, and one trace is connected to the source of the mosfet and the other connected to the drain. i think TP1 is on the drain of the output mosfet.

so put the red probe on the TP1 and the black probe on the black wire to the motor controller. you can put the probe right on the pin in that black plug, the pin that is on the black wire. it should read 0V if that is the drain of the mosfets since the drain is always connected to the motor. if it is open then that means that the TP1 is not on the drain of the output mosfet. if it reads 0V then that means the TP1 is connected to the motor negative, as it should be.

then do the same with the other test points on the other side of the mosfets. TP1 to TP19 and TP1 to that round circle exposed under TP302 and each of the circles underneath it. it is hard to keep track of all the numbers i know, but what we are trying to do is see if those mosfets have blown open when you had the plug problem, or if they have done something that causes the IC to get hot. if they burned open then they will read off scale.

it may be normal for it to be hot if it is a voltage regulator, and the current would be the circuit current coming out of it to drive the BMS circuitry.

i know this is a lot to take in so quick so don't be spooked and as long as the fuse is removed, the battery voltage will not damage your meter.

you can also do the diode test between the black wire to the battery and the TP1 and the others too. kinda just go through all of them to get a feel for what you are measuring as you go along, and there may be other test points on the front i cannot see which you would wanna do the same thing to. this is all just to see if we can find a burned open mosfet that is preventing the current flow to the motor from the battery.

yep i know, lotta hassle, and spooky because it is unfamiliar, but it may help isolate what happened.

actually i am hoping you find an open circuit in the wiring to the plug when you are testing it, and that the mosfets will be ok. but since i don't know how or what was shorted there is no way to know yet. if the mosfet has the voltage reversed and a lotta current flows then it coulda been damaged.

lotta yakking, but i hope it helps a little. take your time and don't get flustered. you have done a lot more than most people here ever do to find the problem. and this circuit is hard too.
 
no rush, not easy to do this stuff starting from scratch.

if we can figure out a way to save it though it will save you a lotta money on a new battery since the bionyx has that canbus feed to the control box so the bike will not work without it so it will be expensive to replace the battery.

i doubt if the bionyx people will sell a replacement board even. that is how they make their money, in the full cost sales.

edited, i think that the trace on the back where TP1 is located is actually connecting the two red wires from battery to motor, and the mosfets Q1 and Q4 are both turned on to make the connection.

on the front side the Q2 and Q3 will connect the black wires together when turned on so that makes the connection from battery to motor.

you can see on the underside where the two prongs of the leads from the charging port come through the pcb at TP16 and TP302 and they should have the charger voltage on them and those test points could be used to establish continuity to the charger. i think the black box on top is somehow related to connecting the charger to the battery, but i don't know how it works, there are some mosfets on the surface behind it.

so most of what i said earlier may be bogus, idiotic twaddle. but if it is possible to use the diode tester across that surface mount mosfet, checking for the diode forward and reversed between the two big wide traces that go into them then that will tell us if the mosfets still work or were damaged.

also i was looking at the plug and realized your canbus stuff goes through that plug too so maybe the way that plug shorted may have affected the canbus leads, and that may be what caused the short that damaged the 18 pin SOIC over there that is getting hot. it seems like a likely candidate for data com to the can bus. maybe.

this one is hard.
 
Hi
Just messured all the mosfets. all 4 shows 450 width the diode tester.
That means that they are ok. i also testet the big diode D3 also fine.

I think that what happend was that something has burned on that PCB douring the bad connection in the 2 wire plug going to the motor.

And when i plug in the 30 Amp fuse it really gives a big spark. but the fuse dont burn and is only drawing 2 watt from the battery, all going to heat in that little chip :-(

I think something is id preventing the fuse to blow. but dont know what. ?

as i see it there the 2 groung is not connectet wia Mosfets, but true 3 5Mo i think sence resistors where you meassure voltage drop to calculate Amp usage ?

I think this is not repaireble. and HOPE SOMBODY HAVE A DEFECT BATTERY WHERE THEY ARE WILLING TO SELL THE PCB :D
 
you did good to find the diodes in the mosfets, really good.

i gotta agree. but there are people here who work with the can bus stuff and know the data com chips and may have an idea of what that 18 pin chip is since they may recognize it from another board they use and if we could find that part and swap it out that would be kinda the only chance to save it.

that's what i am thinking happened too. that the battery voltage got onto the canbus wires and that overvolted that chip which i bet has a trace or link somehow to the data com line.

if i were you i would go directly to Bionyx and tell them they need to send you one of the these boards to replace the one that is bad. you wanna try to reach there technical department and point them to this thread and let them know their product is being discussed in an international forum and that the considered opinion of the BMS experts on this forum is that the design of the plug carrying the motor current was defective because it included the data com lines which led to the destruction of your BMS pcb during normal operation, while you were plugging it in. they know it already i bet so it won't land on deaf ears.

tell them you will send them this damaged board for them to examine in exchange for another board that they may have from a previous battery exchange that they did under warranty and that you need that BMS pcb in order to make you battery work now. if you can keep working them until you get to the right person they may show some interest and go dig a board out of the pile of returned batteries and send it to you.

let them know the whole world is watching and the reputation of Bionyx is on the line since this thread is now available worldwide through google so that other prospective purchasers will consider their response to your request for a scrap part from them. if you find someone who listens then we will all send him emails bombarding him with demands that they help you out. maybe that will help. maybe,,,otherwise it is 'to the wall' for Bionyx. BOL, dm
 
dnmun, at the start of the post I was ready to totally congratulate you for being super helpful and not dismissive of a bionx user (having just bought a system myself, I'm intereseted in how these things will go for me). All your posts have been super helpful up to the last one.

For the last one, I recommend a less aggressive (at least initially) approach to contacting bionx. OP - I think just saying "We were diagnosing this on endless-sphere, and we think there's a problem where the battery voltage leaked into the canbus wiring and fried the chip. We're not 100% sure of this but I'd like to send you my defective board and buy a replacement, how do I go about doing that?" If you can get to someone sufficiently technical maybe that'll work out.

I don't know what BionX's margins are - they do have a pretty pricey product - but I'm willing to bet that e-bikes still aren't big enough business that they can afford to just replace parts without some kind of payment. No doubt their position would be that you voided the warranty by cracking the battery and that the only safe fix is to buy a whole new battery. But as it's unlikely that they're making tons of money in this market, even that position doesn't seem so unreasonable to me.

Osric
 
the parts don't cost them anything. they have piles of batteries returned from customers which are totally functional and have no problems at all. the guys who handle the warranty returns know all the batteries they get are not broken because it is their job to analyze why the batteries failed. i see the same thing with chargers. people return chargers that have nothing wrong with them all the time. i know.

so she has to reach that guys computer, so her email has to be forwarded and she can keep repeating this attempt to reach the people who can help her for free. except she will have to pay shipping to be fair.

they may have a corporate image handler, or twitter and facebook handler who will respond, and they most likely have a corporate reuse and recycle program and she could try to get her email to that person and explain how she wants to make this a positive story for them on their facebook page and not a negative story of a improperly designed plug that causes failure. because people who go to facebook when they are thinking of buying Bionyx will see it.

the world has changed, marketing is totally different now and how they use it is all in their hands when you direct to the person in the corporation who understands what it means if you tell them you are gonna bring up this problem on facebook.

explain to them that you got the expert opinion and directions from a senior manufacturing engineer responsible for end of line failure analysis of an advanced VLSI computer chip production line and that he recommended that Bionyx manufacturing engineers be notified of the problem before discussing it

............................... IN PUBLIC ON FACEBOOK! on the BIONYX FACEBOOK PAGE

see what happens.
 
Have you ridden any other E-bikes? and if yes, what is your opinion of how quiet the BionX system is? They advertise heavily that their system is extra quiet, which makes me suspect that they use a sine-wave controller to make it quieter than the average DD hub (which is fairly quiet already). Thanks in advance....
 
spinningmagnets said:
Have you ridden any other E-bikes? and if yes, what is your opinion of how quiet the BionX system is? They advertise heavily that their system is extra quiet, which makes me suspect that they use a sine-wave controller to make it quieter than the average DD hub (which is fairly quiet already). Thanks in advance....

This seems pretty far off the OP's topic but I test rode every ebike in the store I was buying from and all systems except BionX made at least some sound. BionX is silent unless you stop pedaling in which case the clacking of the freewheel makes noise (as it would on any speedbike when you stop pedaling, though it seems noisier to me than my old cassette was). As far as I can tell, BionX is silent because it's brushless so there is no contact within the motor, while the others I rode had planetary gearing inside and that would make noise. Some were pretty quiet but nothing else gave the illusion of riding an 'ordinary bike' the way BionX did.

Osric
 
Hi, Is this thread finished? I also have a Bionx system with a failed battery (old system - not CANBUS I think). The BMS board is in a real state with some water damage, but the LiMn cells appear to be OK. If any body has an old dead Bionx battery to donate a healthy board from I'd be very interested. Only problem being, I'm UK based. Not much Bionx activity in the UK, either commercially or in use by ebike community..... I wonder why?! :?
 
Hmm, I also get a spark when I connect the fuse. My battery is not dead though, the can bus system works (e.g. torque, speed and voltage can be displayed), only no power goes to the wheel. I linked to my thread regarding this below. I didn't look for any heat on the board, while the battery was opened, but I will do that later (or if I'm lazy I'll just wait a few days and do a voltage readout and see if there's an unusual drop :lol: ).
Apart from the spark, when I put the fuse in, I actually used to get a popping sound when I docked the battery. Is that normal? And can anyone else confirm, that sparks should not appear, when installing the fues?

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=52129&p=772802#p772802

0gri: If you end up buying a complete battery, be cautious with buying from abroad - New regulations in the UK is makes it extremely expensive to ship out of the UK (Li-Ion over 100wh must be declared as hazardous goods and transported by special courriers) and I suspect the regulations also aply the other way.
Btw: If you read german, there's a decent amount of Bionx related activity in http://www.pedelecforum.de and http://www.open-ebike.com
 
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