Ima' wonderin'?? Has ANYONE had an unintended Lipo fire? I charg 'em like any other battery and YOU PEOPLE are jogging my conscience. Anyone??

Rikybob

Do you balance them?

Yup..........both chargers balance the batts..........no puffin' or flames to date. I am interested in anecdotal evidence that may support or not support the concerns raised.

Rikybob

My guess is that if the battery manufacturors feel it necessary to label thier batterys with warnings that include the words "fire" and "only approved lithium chargers" then debating on the validity of thier claims seems a little careless. I am not the safest person in the world and I have even forgotten my lipo packs a couple of times but I also went and bought better chargers than what is supplied in the RTF kits. (MRC 989 Super Brain and a Vision Peak Ultra) I also use a Astro Blinky balancer and carefully monitor my voltages.
There are some pretty eye opening videos on youtube with regards to lipo "mishaps" as well as testing videos. Anything that burns at 1500F or better has my respect.


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Of all the things I ever lost....................................... I miss my mind the most!

Arrow,

As of this moment I am going to stop charging my lipos near the fireplace soaking in gas I too saw the YouTubes with the 110 volt lines hooked up to the batteries. Quite impressive display it made. I can only express that I am not being careless when I ask about any anecdotal evidence of an accident happening to someone. Your admonishment about my debating the validity of the manufacturer being careless is noted.

Respectfully,


r/b

riky.......don't get me wrong.....I wasn't scolding you. I got the impression from your original post that you were doubting the seriousness of lipos care. As your siggie says.....Trust, then Verify.
I was only stating my thoughts on lipos and what my precautions are to AVOID having that happen to me. I honestly hope that no one has to tell a story of how thier battery scared the buh Jeebus out of them.
My apologies if you took that as a direct statement aimed solely at yourself. I am a lousy aim so I just use a scattergun and blast em all. As you will find if you follow any of my posts I am very outspoken and try to be as up front as possible. I figure if you know my feelings on a matter or my opinion then I have at least communicated with you. We don't have to agree but we do owe each and every person on here respect. I have read your posts and I find you to be a very intelligent and likeable person. You have great ideas and also a willingness to share both your knowledge and your humor.
Again, my apologies.


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Of all the things I ever lost....................................... I miss my mind the most!

No apology necessary! The UP side of fourms is sharing of ideas and thoughts (I have many). Are they good? I ahhhh dunno, but I digress? The down side is, is no tone inflection, subtle body language, the human experience is missing and sometimes folks directness is misinterpreted as anamosity. Again, no apology! Now lets go set one of my crappy Eflite stocks on fire and see what it does!!!

Happy flyin' (not fryin')


R/B

I was rigging a connector yesterday so I can charge the lipo battery on a new charger. I striped the 3 wires soddered them. Slipped the shrink wrap over the sodddered area but did not heat it up. went to do something else, forgot about it, somehow I must have bumped it. The shrink wrap slipped off, live wires touched each other, wire insulation started to melt, next thing I knew, the wires were on fire. With my quick reaction, I cut all the wires and everything calm down.
Lesson learned: Strip and insulate one wire at a time. Cut wires at different segments so they wont touch each other. Finish what you are doing before doing something else. Work with lipos in a non flamable area. LIPOS CAN BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE.

ouch!

r/b

I had a similar problem when I was soldering a connector on. I didn't put the shrink wrap around the already soldered connector and I accidently touched the other wire to that one and a big spark happened on a 3 cell 2170 mAh battery. With quick reflexes nothing but that happened.

Rookie mistakes everyone makes.......

Dont short out any bat, especially a lipo lol

A few years back more fires and issues were more widely known but that was due to people not knowing how to care for their lipos. Chargers back then werent as smart as they are today. Back then you hade to know your cell count, MAh, amperage and set your charger accordingly. most fires I read about was because someone set a charger wrong. Set to charge a 3s battery with a 4s setting.
you hear less and less about battery fires now days mainly because of alot of anomally detections that are built into chargers. I have a charger and if something isnt right, it will stop charging and it also has a auto cutoff when battery is fully charged (few years ago, that was a luxury for a Lipo) Today, when I hear of a fire, its usually because of a damaged battery or wires getting crossed. Still, you do have to be careful with Lipos and respect them.

Most fires happen during charging and from charging the battery incorrectly. I have never heard of anyone having a fire charging a Blade CX battery however I have had one go up in smoke during flight. I was out flying at a friends place. I took my CX2 almost 300 feet straight up when it lost range. With 2.4 gig once you are out of range there is no getting it back. Anyways the heli came smack down on top of my friend house. I noticed a little puff of dust come up when it hit. At first I was thinking it was just old shingles that I smashed. But the dust continued to come up. It was not dust is was smoke and the smoke continued to rise from my friend’s house. Great I thought, I am going to burn my friend’s house down. My friend was quick with the ladder and threw the burning CX down to me. The battery was puffed up like a little ball. The impact was so hard that a screw punctured the battery causing utter chaos. Li-po batteries do have the potential to create a nasty little fire. However it does take the perfect situation for it to happen so it is rare. The reason why you hear the hype is because when it does happen it is bad, really bad. My local hobby shop has had at least two customers that have had li-po fires. One guy lost his garage and all his toys. I believe it was human error. Charging incorrectly and unattended.

I've been flying for 3 years now and fortunately, never encountered and lipo fires.

However, I aways stay in the room while charging a lipo, and have a fire extingusiher always on site and handy. Cheap investment.

Good times, but wheres the marshmallows? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCWdnjLqVWw