billchuckred

My Feedback: (26)

I don't get it. Why would anyone use a battery type that could burn down everything you own to save a little weight and get a little more speed/duration?

I'm into robotics and not RC so much anymore, but I would NEVER have a lipo battery in my house, or vehicle for that matter.

Risking everything you own and your loved ones for a little performance upgrade makes no sense to me when Nimhs are reasonably safe to use and don't have near the memory effect that the old nicads used to.

Just my two cents.

ThunderbirdJunkie

My Feedback: (3)

Hopefully these two quotes using EXACTLY WHAT YOU SAID, only applied to different things, makes you realize how ignorant what you just said was.

Do you own a cellular telephone, Bill? How about a GPS navigation unit?
Just curious.

RobbieP

You are aware that the wristwatch you're wearing has a lipo battery in it, don't you?
You are aware that your cellphone would be twice as big, and weigh 5-times as much, if it had a NiMH battery in it - don't you?

billchuckred

My Feedback: (26)

ok...both quotes you reposted are the same single quote I made...and relate to the same thing...so that's confusing.

Secondly....GPS no...Cell ...yes....so I stand corrected. I have a single 1100mah lithium ion battery in my life. Point made.

I don't ever fast charge it or drain it at massive rates...but I got one.

I use the provided charger for it, which I assume has a cut off built in when peak charged.

Anyway, I am not trying to start a flaming war, (no pun intended) but for me it just makes no sense. Li Poly batteries are known to be volatile if you screw up when charging. I mean I have heard about guys charging their batteries in metal boxes ...its absurd to me why you would use a battery you need to put in a flameproof box to safely charge.

slopoke76

I had one catch fire all alone after being charged the previous day. It was brand new and not plugged up to anything. Burnt all my RC stuff up. It does happen but maybe not very often. I use a B6 charger and have had good luck using and external balancer. This was a freak thing I'm sure. I know have a Lipo fire proof bag to charge them and store them in.http://www.flyinggiants.com/forums/s...15#post1305039

billchuckred

My Feedback: (26)

ok..i see the difference in your quotes now...

you are aware there are safety codes involved with electrical wiring, which are inspected ...right?

I don't think anyone comes over to inspect your charging setup or monitors when you take a nap when it comes to charging incendiary batteries

I don't wear a wristwatch...as I said....to my knowledge I have exactly one lithium ion battery in my world....1100mah cell battery

ThunderbirdJunkie

My Feedback: (3)

Bill, all batteries, without exception...nay...all vehicles for stored energy are dangerous.
All of them. Name one form of stored energy that does not have potential danger.

Think about it, dude...you are storing energy. Where is it gonna go when maw rings the dinner bell? Gasoline/other petroleum based fuels, coal, lithium batteries, lead acid batteries, all come with some inherent danger.

If there were a dead short to develop in your cell phone, you'd have a fire in your pocket real quick. If the charging firmware in your cell phone were to somehow become corrupt, be it a virus or whatever (more likely than you think), you could easily be homeless. Would the positive lead in your every day car rub against the radiator core support/fenderwell/firewall of your daily transportation device, be it motorcycle, car, pickup truck, helicopter, guess what? Tons of potential for a fire there...starting with the battery.

Lithium batteries are no more dangerous than any other form of stored energy. NiCd and NiMh batteries explode violently without warning. Lithium batteries at least swell and say
YO DAWG I NEEDS ME SUM ATTENTION!

Ever seen the look on a dude's face when his brand new RC10T3 literally EXPLODES on his pit table?

ThunderbirdJunkie has.

And promptly sold him a well-worn T2 for twice what he had into it so dude could make the last qualifier[&:]

billchuckred

My Feedback: (26)

ok....everything in life has *some* inherent danger.
walking across the freaking street has *some* inherent danger.


Compared to other battery types commonly used in RC....Li Poly batteries are simply the most volatile from everything Ive read...hands down.

and to compare a small watch battery or a cell battery ....neither of which are ever fast charged or discharged at a massive rate...to a whiz bang 5000mah lipo that is OFTEN fast charged and ALWAYS discharged at a massive rate..is like comparing apples to oranges in my book

I am talking LEVELS of inherent danger here. If I had another battery type in my life that recommended charging it in a flame proof metal box...I would look for another option for that particular battery...even if it made my vehicle/appliance..whatever a little heavier and lowered it's performance a little bit....because I think that's the sensible thing to do.

Am I going to move into a shack with no running water or electricity to be safer?...probably not....but I sure won't be fast charging any lipos in my house.

ThunderbirdJunkie

My Feedback: (3)

Bill...that's precisely what was recommended back when NiMh became common

Don't know where you were back then.

And who said anything about "fast charging" lipos?

Scottgir

The black case one was the third charger I ever owned. Yes I've been in the hobby that long LOL

RobbieP

No cell phone either, huh?

SyCo_VeNoM

Ipods(along with most MP3 Players), some mother boards for the PC's internal clock (you are using a computer I'm guessing), Laptops (although some are lithium-ion)and a pile of other things you wouldn't suspect in all truth.
I've seen reports of Ipods bursting into flames in ppls pants

billchuckred

My Feedback: (26)

You know what?...it's personal choice man.

I personally won't use Lipoly for my robotics projects. That's my choice.

I had no intention of trying to convert anyone to another battery type.

I am just stating that in my opinion, the risk doesn't equal the reward in this case.

So, we can all go on using whatever we like and we can all read more stories about cooked RC vehicles, explosions, fires....someone becoming homeless over their hobby....it's all good with me.

To each their own.

ThunderbirdJunkie

My Feedback: (3)

Bill, nobody asked you to or cares that you're going to choose not to use lithium polymer; the flip side of it is, if you're going to make a broad brushed statement like you made on a discussion forum means there's a danger of it being discussed, at great length despite your desires against it, and whether or not your decision is based on anything tangible or just one made out of ignorance.

Thousands of people die as a result of automobile crashes every year.

Thousands of people die as a result of motorcycle accidents involving cars every year. Is ThunderbirdJunkie going to sell his bike? Pfffft.

There's a guy over on a Jeep forum that nearly lost his home because his Jeep caught on fire while sitting in his garage.

There's a guy over on a Jeep forum that was stranded in the middle of the desert because of a battery fire in his Jeep.

Does that mean ThunderbirdJunkie is going to get rid of his Jeep?

Did you know that hybrid cars use lithium batteries? Are you going to choose not to drive on the same roads as hybrid cars because one of them might burst into flames?

Every single one of the lithium battery fires that have destroyed something you've read, without exception have occurred because of user error.

The same reason the brand-new RC10T3 exploded with its graphite chassis and a NiCd side by side battery pack.

The moral of the story is, if you don't die doing something fun, you will die doing something boring.

Dale Gribble

My Feedback: (4)

How many millions of lithium based cells are out there? Many, many millions. Lithium is the new standard for battery selections. The power density v. size and weight is unmatchable with conventional technologies. Also, manufacturers are now producing multi-generational products that incorporate much more stable designs. Lithium is here to stay and is the new standard for power. You can fight it, but soon you will succumb to its marvels.

billchuckred

My Feedback: (26)

I just think you are missing the entire point.

I have overcharged nicads and dead shorted nicads until they were acid spitting unreconizable blobs on the work table.

I have cooked many a servo/speed control/receiver/motor in my day.

What I am getting at is.....almost every story you read related to a battery "incident" in our hobby these days involves Lipoly.

The guy who started this thread lost oh about $500 worth of equipment and potentially much more over a few ounces of weight savings and longer run times. If that isn't tangible, I don't know what is.

You, or someone on this very thread mentioned knowing someone who lost their HOUSE over a Lipoly incident. If that isn't tangible, I don't know what is.

I agree in many cases it's user error, but humans as a general rule are going to make mistakes...and Lipoly batteries have a MUCH smaller margin of error than other types of batteries.


No one is saying that there aren't risks involved with other technologies or energy storage options. I get it. Batteries are dangerous toys.

But can you truly straight faced say that it makes sense to have a 3oz lighter Emaxx that runs a little longer and a little faster versus a tiny loss in performance with nimhs after hearing this guy's story?

t9dragon

My Feedback: (11)

What the guy did with the E-Maxx and charging his batteries was "USER ERROR" and had nothing to do with the battery, charger, truck or anything else. It was plain and simple USER ERROR.

ThunderbirdJunkie

My Feedback: (3)

OK bro. So has ThunderbirdJunkie's. He chalked it up to "crap happens".
And almost every story you read related to a battery incident in 2003 had an NiMh battery involved. In 1997 it involved a high capacity NiCd. What's your point? It's the common thing now.
No, he lost $500 worth of equipment and potentially much more over hooking his truck up to his charger and then going to bed and:
A: Not monitoring the truck
B: Leaving the batteries in the truck
C: Generally ignoring every battery charging rule that's existed since electric RC was birthed
No, it's not over a lithium polymer incident. It's in a negligence incident. If your house burns down because you leave a pan full of bacon grease on the stove with it turned on, what do you blame?

The stove?
The pan?
The grease?
The cabinets that caught fire?

What do you blame? ThunderbirdJunkie would blame himself for that one.
Prove it. There's a video of a LiPo battery hooked up to an extension cord plugged into 110v AC, and the video is almost 6 minutes long before any smoke comes out of the battery.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qrgi4t_dPh4[/youtube]
No, but ThunderbirdJunkie can truly straight faced say it makes absolute sense to babysit any battery while charging. It would appear that you don't get it.

Slo-V Flyer

Unfortunately every single NIMH I've owned, and babied, died a slow miserable death, mostly because they just could not keep up with the demand/usage/heat etc. And that was with BRUSHED motors, 13-17t at the "high" end. The $50 packs I bought of IB4200 cells, died, all 12 cells between them, one even vented and almost ruined my Bandit, while running a Novak 6.5 brushless setup.

I also think that perhaps you are not fully aware of the performance gain/and even in some cases, the power requirement, that lipo provides. Not only does a typical lipo battery of similar voltage and capacity weigh half as much as a Nimh, it also provide far more punch (amp delivery), and does not suffer from any memory effects due to charge state, and does not have to by cycled or fiddled with as far as storage goes compared to Nimh, or discharging down to empty, before charging (which Nimh WILL build up a memory problem from eventually, in my experience).

Also, with modern brushless motors, Nimh just cannot delivery the amperage or performance, consistently and in some cases, safely. The battery might start out quick, but the voltage keeps dropping and dropping down from about ~1.5 volts per cell hot off the charger (literally hot sometimes) to ~1 volt. That's almost a 30% reduction in voltage over the run time of the battery. The more common issue is they will cause a lot of cogging, and brownouts during start up, or high demand situations, where they can barely supply 40-80 amps in bursts, at which point most will reach 120-140+*F very quickly. In many cases I've read a bad battery can cause severe damage to ESC and motors, due to ripple current and other various technical issues I am not capable of understanding yet. Can lipo cause that? Yes an inferior spec'd one can, but trying to use a Nimh to power a 22 volt 12 lb monster truck with a 2000 watt brushless motor is just plain, well risky. The Nimh would most likely be abused and overheat very quickly from my own experience.

Then there's the cell balance issue. I've had at least 3-4 batteries where a cell or more were out of whack within a few cycles and despite my efforts to rebalance them the battery just did not perform the same ever.

I always used a peak detection charger, and almost every time I would charge the Nimh cells, it was at or below 1C (2-3 amps for the 3000 and 4200 mah cells).

I've crashed a couple of lipo cells, head on into a yard. This in a brushless airplane, nose diving down. The motor pushed back into the lipo battery, putting a nice visible imprint of the motor mount into the face, and the lipo remained plugged in for 2 days at least, at which point it was deader than dead. But it did not catch fire, or for that matter spew anything. My Nimh on the other hand, one of them leaked, and another would get blistering hot from brushless usage and well the rest is history.

Ok that was my two cents I felt I needed to bring up.

Access

You already use LiPos whether you like it or not. Your cellphone/blackberry/iPhone most likely uses a LiPo. Your personal videogame player (ie. PSP), your apple iPod, etc. They almost all use LiPos now. Even some Laptops have switched LiPos (instead of Li-Ion). Do you forgo the use of all these things just to avoid using LiPos?

No battery that is capable of high-power discharge is safe if mis-handled. High-power NIMH can cause third degree burns, they may not 'vent with fire' but they can explode with significant force if mis-treated.

RobbieP

So do you have a cellphone or not?

Or is your only motivation is to perpetuate rumors and spread lies.

billchuckred

My Feedback: (26)

So, we have this new battery technology available 12V at 10000mah and it weighs one gram!

Only drawback, you can only charge it for between 3 and 3.4 seconds. If you charge it for 3.5 seconds...hiroshima.

"Wow, I could save like 8oz in my model and the thing will run all day without recharging!"

Now if safely used (charged between 3 and 3.4 seconds exactly at the correct amperage) ...this battery is perfectly safe.

(explosion in the background)....USER ERROR

Slo-V Flyer

I believe he posted above that he does own a cellphone, an 1100 mah li-ion or something.

RobbieP

Baloney, hogwash, total BS - apparently you haven't been involved in the hobby, or charging nicads or nimh batteries (or kept up with all the stories) and you'd know all kinds of people have had these packs explode. And in some cases do bodily harm.

I've heard of nobody BLOWINGUPa lipo.

The guy who started this thread did it to himself, it was USER-ERROR. He voided one of the elementary rules of this hobby, regardless of the battery type, as he left his charger unattended.

ThunderbirdJunkie

My Feedback: (3)

Holy crap you just don't get it do you?

You must be either stone cold EVERYTHING BAD I READ ON THE INTERNET IS TRUE AND NOTHING ELSE CAN BE ignorant/stubborn, or just plain cannot comprehend what the hell is being said.

Please, stop blowing things out of proportion and using your scare tactics to get people to see YOUR way is the only way. You're like a damned political ad