Lipo battery charging risk of fire

[Creature]

Had a Lipo explode last night in my living room while charging on a smart charger at the proper voltage. I sustained 2nd degree burns while extinguishing the fire which was surprisingly large given the small size of the battery and all of the Lithium polymer compound that was shot out of the battery when it failed was also aflame and will stick to any surface it comes into contact with including skin. Just was to put this up because the battery compound in the Lipos is far more flammable than a NiCd given the same amount of substance. I would suggest if you must charge indoors, to do so by setting the battery inside a surplus ammo tin with the lid resting closed to contain the fire and fragments of battery that will be also flaming should the battery fail. If you have any questions about the circumstances around my particular incident feel free to message me.

Creature

[Transition]

oh and after said explosion make sure to call your friend at 1am and only really get out exploded, which equals friend grabbing boots and gun...

[Creature]

hey, I inhaled a ton of that gnarly smoke and was up coughing all night with my hand in big bowl of ice water- was trying to save you the same pain, and your carpet.

[~Thunder~]

I would suggest if you must charge indoors, to do so by setting the battery inside a surplus ammo tin with the lid resting closed to contain the fire and fragments of battery that will be also flaming should the battery fail.

You know, that's not a bad idea.
Call me paranoid, but i might start doing just that.
Sorry to hear about you experience. Burnt up hands are a muthfucka, don't i know...

[Chachi]

Buy a Lipo Sack. It actually allows some air flow out of the bag as your lipo explodes rather than containing the pressure within a metal box, making for a potentially worse situation. Here is where you can snag a Lipo Sack if you don't have one:
http://www.airsoftgi.com/product_info.p ... ts_id=3692

I have been using lipos in my RC truck for a couple of years now, and very high capacity/voltage ones at that, and have yet to have a failure as you describe. I am glad that this wasn't worse than it was, and it surely could have been. I'm sorry there were injuries involved, and most likely property damage too. I hope you will recover ok from the burns. But the thing is, lipos don't just explode for no reason...typically. Had the pack been dropped or punctured at all? You said you were charging it at the correct voltage, right? What capacity was the battery, and what voltage were you charging it at? You mentioned it was charging using a smart charger, right? Was the cutoff set correctly?

I don't mean to pry into the situation, but want to know some further details and see if we can figure out the reason this pack popped like it did. Again, sorry to hear about this, and I am glad you are relatively ok.

[Creature]

I was charging at 11.1v which is the same as the batt. Judging by the force and the serious heat and the fact that every polymer particle that was projected from the explosion was aflame, I hope that a Lipo sack is made out of some very fire resistant material such as asbestos. One of the globs was about quarter sized and it was so hot that it cracked the ceramic tile it landed on in front of the fire place. I understand the concern of creating pressure when the thing fails, however after seeing the severe flammable nature of the Li polymer I am going with a metal container.

[Creature]

The batt was 1800 maH and the charger is supposed to be auto detect to go to trickle once charge has been reached. The battery was not previously damaged in any way- I always inspect them before charging them.

[Chachi]

The charger should tell you how many amps you are charging at rather than volts. You want to charge at a 1c rate, never higher unless the battery says you can do so. A 1c rate means 1 times the capacity. So for a 2000mah battery, you would charge it at 2 amps, no more. Being that this was an 1800mah battery, you should be charging it at 1.8 amps. Here is some info from a lipo website about charging these types of batteries:

You must select the charge rate current that does not exceed 1C (one time the capacity of the battery, unless otherwise noted). A higher setting may cause fire. This chart is calculated at 1x capacity of pack. Generally speaking, charging at even lower rates will extend battery life.

800 mAh: Charge at or below 800mA

1500 mAh: Charge at or below 1.5 Amps

6000 mAh: Charge at or below 6.0 Amps

If at any time you witness a battery starting to balloon or swell up, discontinue the charging process immediately. Disconnect the battery and observe it in a safe place for approximately 15 minutes. Continuing to charge a battery that has begun to swell may result in fire.

So, you mentioned that you charged it at 11.1 volts. Can you clarify this number for informational purposes?

[Creature]

Let me clear this up because I can already see it coming, the battery and charger were both located on the tile, the half of the battery that remained tethered by the connector to the charger landed on the carpet under the plug. The other half shot across the room hitting the sliding glass door and falling to the ground. The battery literally exploded and seperated lengthwise into two pieces Every single glob of battery innards was aflame that you see on the carpet. Oh and the white pieces of plastic you see in the second to last pic are the pieces of blinds that shattered when the battery hit the door.

[Creature]

I am currently suspecting that this combination of charger and battery is not safe DUE TO THE CHARGER. I feel the battery was ok, however I purchased this combo set from Airsplat after inquring about the product and its settings etc. I informed them of this event. Either way, I have been involved in hobbies such as R/C for 21 years now and have not seen a battery fail this catastrophically. I have seen them fail, and rupture and pop and ooze and all that- but I've never seen one actually explode in flame, especially going from seemingly fine to BANG. Just weird occurrence and I'm all about safety and this could have been much worse than it was (I and my lady got lucky) so I just thought I would bring it to people's attention.

[league 4]

Looks like one of the horrible NON balancing chargers from airsplat.

There's your problem.

[darkaces07]

Had a Lipo explode last night in my living room while charging on a smart charger at the proper voltage. I sustained 2nd degree burns while extinguishing the fire which was surprisingly large given the small size of the battery and all of the Lithium polymer compound that was shot out of the battery when it failed was also aflame and will stick to any surface it comes into contact with including skin. Just was to put this up because the battery compound in the Lipos is far more flammable than a NiCd given the same amount of substance. I would suggest if you must charge indoors, to do so by setting the battery inside a surplus ammo tin with the lid resting closed to contain the fire and fragments of battery that will be also flaming should the battery fail. If you have any questions about the circumstances around my particular incident feel free to message me.

Creature

Your charger didn't have a balance function that's why it exploded. Get one of these

[rockettravis]

Looks like one of the horrible NON balancing chargers from airsplat.

There's your problem.

agreed, if you dont balance your pack at EVERY charge this is inevitable.

[Transition]

its a one cell lipo, so what do you balance? airsplat sells it as a package, kind of a big shazaam up on the part of the dealer...

[Nec]

Transition, I'm sorry about what happened hopfully you are ok.

BTW Those chargers are horrible!

The switch on the top can easily "bumped" to a different setting which leads to overcharging. My friends has that very same on and has "puffed" 2 lipos, thankfully they didn't explode until after he put them outside and under a Terra cotta flower pot.

You said you only have a single cell to charge? That is very interesting, I would ask for a picture but obviously you don't have that lipo anymore. ( ) Do you have a link?