3300 Ni-MH Cells (up the ante)
 

From the "Brand New Releases At Nuremberg" toy fair: (source: rcZone web site: http://www.rczone.net/)

Powers 3300 cells!!!

I haven't even bought any 3000 HV's yet. :)

7 turn motors, here I come!

GGGRRRRR I just bought 4 3000hv's a couple months ago! lol... I can promise you, I'm NOT buying 3300's.... I'm hoping to hold off on buying more packs, until either brushless motor's are popular, or there's a 3500-4000. lol... I don't see the point.

HEHEHEHEH yeah but they are Powers cells. That means that they will perform like a HV3000. HEHEHEH J/K Powers cells work great they just take forever to charge. I quit buying new batteries after HV3000 and SMH. You just dont need more capacity than that. I can run a 5 min mod heat and still drive around for 4 minutes after the race is over.
IKE

Powers 3000's sucked so why would people run out to but something new from them. The old batteries had NO PUNCH what so ever. What good is run time if I can't get the car to move?????

Well you never know... remember Sanyo's original 3000s were horrible, but their new HVs are really good. You never know until you try it.. Panasonic had a history of making lousy batteries, until the SMHs came out... So it's better to reserve judgement until the product is out and has been thoroughly tested. Personally, I don't care about the name of the company, just the performance of individual products.

correction- The first sanyo cells didn't suck as you put it. They didn't have as much punch as stock racer's wanted (but why do you need a 3000 in stock) but they were killer for mod. The first generation panasonic were a good battery if you can keep it from blowing up. The powers had nothing to offer period. Low turn mods didn't even have punch with a powers cell. I could be eating my words once the cell does come out (but I'm not holding my breath) BTW....those first generation Sanyo's have been keeping up/beating the newer HV'S and SMH.

Re: 3300 Ni-MH Cells (up the ante)
 

Ummm, the only cells that I've seen on rczone.net are those cell with a ugly green, but, aren't Powers. Powers cells are basically the same blue heatshrink but with a 3300 rather than a 3000.

It stinks me that a new Panasonic cell has been unveiled. Too early to show a new Sanyo cell (I bet for a new panasonic cell).

STLNLST, were the original sanyo 3000s that good? I've always heard of reliability issues. I was told by some very fast racers to get SMHs (back then) instead of the sanyos because the (old) sanyos didn't perform as well in mod class, and didn't last many charges before performance decreased.

PS If they're as good as you say, why are they being replaced by the 3000HVs?

Part of the issue is in the release chronology.
First came the blue Panasonic 3k's. By being the first out they were the test cells for how to charge, race, and maintenance this new nimh technology. What seems to have been found was that many of the cells were destroyed unbeknownst to the matchers during the matching process because the older turbo matchers were taking the cells down to 0.0v without reporting that info. No charge in the batteries meant the by the time we bought them they were toast unless we happened to get some fresh packs that hadn't been more than a few weeks out of the matcher.
Then Powers took this original Panasonic 3k cell and put it in red heat shrink at about the same time that Saft was unvieling their new 3k that never caught on due to very poor voltage (Orion sold some of these as "sport" packs because of their great durability) and some people mistook the Saft cells as the Powers Red cells.
In August of 2000 Sanyo came out with their 3k cell (the Sanyo H) and it had better voltage than the Panasonic 3K but the IR was a little suspect. Most importantly was the deficiency in capacity between the pre-production cells and also the Panasonic 3k cell. The pre-prod cells were running around 365-370sec/30amps (same as Pan 3k) while the production cells came out at 355sec/30amps. The lost capacity and slightly higher IR was too much for this cell to compete. The only thing going for the cell by then was that it seemed to be a little more robust than the Pan 3k. It could be charge a little harder and didn't loose as much capacity if it sat uncycled for 3-4wks or so where as it was being found that this was a death move for the Pan 3k (they could lose as much as 100sec/20amp if left uncycled for more than 3 weeks).
Then in Dec. 2000/Jan 2001 Panasonic released the SMH which had better voltage AND even Lower IR's. On top of this the SMH's seemed to be about the equal in robustness to the Sanyo H cell. It seems that some of the cells/packs keep their runtime very well and others don't which may suggest something about maintenance procedures. At the same time Powers came out with a new cell from China called the GT-R in dark blue shrink. This cell had awesome runtime (380's/30amps being common)competive IR and the better cells had decent -to- competitive voltage for 1/12th scale racing especially and TC mod was decent as well. The big thing about this cell was that it had the best durability that we had seen to date in a nimh cell but Sanyo was to match that later that year.
Finally Sanyo came out with the HV (high voltage) cell around Aug/Sept. and as we know this cell has even greater voltage but still not quite as low of an IR as the SMH. It's durability seems to be checking in as much greater than the older "H" cell both in shelf life and in abuse capability . The big issue now seems to be if the higher charge rate capability of this cell offsets the lower IR of the SMH and that seems to be very close to a draw. Theses cells can be charged regularly between 6-10amps with no degredation in performance. The higher you charge them though the greater the voltage drop off during the run so most 1/12th mod's & TC are charging at 6amps and stock's are at the higher amps. These cells also seems to be closer to the pre-production cells in terms of capacity and 360's - 370sec/ 30amps aren't uncommon to find on the shelves. So were do the new Power's 3300's come in? Not sure but it seems like this cell will be the basic GT-R with a little more voltage and less runtime, time will tell.

Thanks for clearing it up darnold.

I have been beating sponsored driver's running the same 3000 sanyo's from last year. I do have SMH (which I feel are way better) but my point is that I still can put it down with the first generation cells. One year on these cells and they are still strong. Certain people take care of their things while other's don't. I have seen racer's around me buying cells every other month because they don't take care of things. Do what works for you though.

"Not sure but it seems like this cell will be the basic GT-R with a little more voltage and less runtime, time will tell."

Why would they increase the capacity rating of the cell if it has less capacity than its predessor?

Pat- good question. The answer is that they are not really increasing the capacity but simply converting some of the capacity that was already at 3300mah into more voltage. Since capacity is discharge time multiplied by discharge amps divided by 3.6 we can see the following: (400sec x 30amps) / 3.6= 3333.333mah since 380's- 400's at 30amps were rather typical then you can see that the capacity was already at 3300. The real difference could be seen in joules which is discharge rate x discharge time x discharge ave. voltage So if the Old GT-R's were: 30amps x 390sec x 1.09 = 12753j vs. a theoretical new pack of GT-R 3300's of 30amps x 380sec x 1.12= 12768. So the "new" GT-R 3300's would have more total energy even though it is down on runtime. This is why extra runtime if it can be converted to power can be better than less runtime with higher voltage. Of course this is not taking into account the ability of the cell to release that energy nor it's ability to recover from "spykes".

So has anyone tried any of these yet?