LiPos are dangerous

[Capt. Speirs]

Don't get to comfortable around LiPos!

LiPos are very dangerous

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Intentional LiPo fire?

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LiPo esplosion aftermath!

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[JasonJ]

Lipos aren't that dangerous, if cared for and a bit of common sense is used. Sure there are some rare occurances, but when it comes down to it, the majority of lipo "failures" are either deliberate or from severe neglect. I tried to get a lipo to violently fail in a glorious epic ball of hades style fire and got nothing. I skewered it, slashed it, shorted it, nothing.

Anything can be unsafe if you deliberately do stupid crap to it. The drive in your car on the way to the flying field is more dangerous than the lipos you are using.

[MXRACERX43]

Funny. I did all the right saftey things with lipos. Actually above and beyond. I got hit with a freak accident... I know Jason is aware of it.
2 or 3 weeks ago a friend put his Rappy in at the feild. He did a good one on it and taco'd his RX pack. We did everything we could to ignite that thing and all we got was a little smoke. Stabbed it with a screwdriver, shorted it, threw it in a puddle. Nothing.:roll:

[DominicD]

LMAO, we tried several times to set off a lipo at my club (we have a firepit you safety Nazis), it is actually pretty tricky to get a modern lipo to do anything but make alot of smoke.

[imq707s]

Wow...imagine that. If you stab a lipo with an icepick, it's going to short out and catch on fire. Using that logic you can better get rid of any plastic gas cans you have in the garage because if you take a match to a can of gasoline, it's going to catch on fire.

:thumbdown:

[Sylver]

I did a stupid stupid thing when I attempted to attach a Deans plug onto a little 20C 11.1v battery. I cut both leads at the same time.
I'm now nursing a rather painful burn on the finger I usually pick my nose with.

Lesson learned.

[Beebad]

:lololThat's funny..... After seeing the videos I purchased a small fire safe to keep all my lipos in.

[Pipes]

I need to dispose of a puffed lipo. What is the best way.
Thanks

[RocketSled]

I need to dispose of a puffed lipo. What is the best way.
Thanks

Google "LiPo disposal" and you'll get plenty of recommendations. Or search this forum, it's been discussed many, many times.

[halley]

I need to dispose of a puffed lipo. What is the best way.
Thanks

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=safe+lipo+battery+disposal

[Sylver]

Just had to disarm one about an hour ago, the one that I ruined by bridging it.

Made an ice cream container of salt water, chucked in the puffed li-po, held a pin on the end of some pliers, pricked a few holes in each of the cells plastic and watched it bubble for a little while.
Leave for a few days, dispose of in the garbage bin.

Oh, and wash off the pliers after so they don't get all rusty.

[Capt. Speirs]

Lipos aren't that dangerous, if cared for and a bit of common sense is used. Sure there are some rare occurances, but when it comes down to it, the majority of lipo "failures" are either deliberate or from severe neglect. I tried to get a lipo to violently fail in a glorious epic ball of hades style fire and got nothing. I skewered it, slashed it, shorted it, nothing.

Anything can be unsafe if you deliberately do stupid crap to it. The drive in your car on the way to the flying field is more dangerous than the lipos you are using.

Tell that to all the laptop owners that had their laptops go up in flames.:nanabobo

[DominicD]

Laptops do not use lipos.

[RocketSled]

Laptops do not use lipos.

Yeah. No. That's wrong. Older laptops maybe, but pretty much everything built in the last 3-4 years does. You simply can't beat LiPos for power/weight and that factor is as important to portable computing as it is to cell phones and RC.

[DominicD]

Li-ion.

[RocketSled]

Li-ion.

Sorry, Jeopardy Contestant. The answer is: What is Lithium Polymer?

Shopping results at Best Buy: HP - Lithium Polymer Battery (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Lithium-Polymer+Battery+for+Select+HP+and+Compaq+Laptops/9354245.p?skuId=9354245&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=9354245&ref=06&loc=01&id=1218090327687)

Shopping results for Apple Lithium Polymer Batteries at Yahoo.com (http://shopping.yahoo.com/s:Laptop%20Batteries:1542-Battery%20Type=Lithium%20Polymer:4168-Brand=Apple)

Need I go on? :shock:

[DominicD]

And the other 260 laptop batteries on that page are li-ion.

[RocketSled]

And the other 260 laptop batteries on that page are li-ion.

Your point being? Your original statement a few posts back was:

Laptops do not use lipos.

Clearly, that is not correct. Laptops most definitely do use LiPos. Had you said "many Laptops do not use LiPos" we'd be having a different discussion.

Why are there more LiIon batteries than LiPo batteries? Mostly, it's because of the number of "legacy" systems that have shipped that originally used LiIon, there's a big aftermarket in replacement batteries for older equipment (since as we know, batteries don't last forever, or even very long in the scheme of things). In another few years, when the population of Laptops shipped with LiPos is greater, that ratio will be reversed.

[buszz]

How to properly dispose of Lipo: Place carefully in garbage sack. Place at curb night before trash man comes.

[JasonJ]

So out of the gazillion laptops sold, how many have caught fire? Any hard numbers out there? I'm guessing the failure rate is pretty low compared to the number in use.

[RocketSled]

So out of the gazillion laptops sold, how many have caught fire? Any hard numbers out there? I'm guessing the failure rate is pretty low compared to the number in use.

It's remarkably hard to find manufacturer Reliability or FIT data on LiPo batteries. It's equally difficult to find data on TAM or global ship quantities (it exists, but usually as a for-fee publication from a market research company and I'm not interested enough to pay a few $1000 to satisfy my curiosity). It's impossible to find data on actual end-user reported failures (like Toyota and their now famous accelerator pedal, battery manufacturers and the OEMs who consume those batteries are very circumspect about sharing actual failure data for obvious reasons).

But the logic you are suggesting seems valid to me. There is certainly data on how many Cell Phones and Laptop computers ship annually, Cell Phone shipments number in the few hundred million/quarter, over a billion ship annually. Laptops (and Nettops) show similar shipment quantities, though perhaps a little less. Figure a nice round number for Cell Phones and Laptop/Nettop is in the 2+ Billion units/year range. Each one of those Laptops and Cell Phones have a Lithium battery (Ion or Polymer). Throw in things like iPods, Zunes, Cameras, Portable Phones, etc., etc., etc., we're probably topping 3B in annual Lithium battery shipments. That's a *pissload* of batteries. The failure rates have to be very, very low or with these kinds of volumes it would be abundantly clear that there was a safety problem. Think of how many reported Toyota failures there have been, a few dozen on shipments of over 8M cars.

LiPos would seem to be very reliable, at least as reliable as Toyotas. Like cars, the problem isn't that LiPos are particularly prone to failure so much as that when they do fail the collateral damage can be significant.

[knutk]

Hi!
You can do it the way I do it..........fill a tincan with salt and water, dip the lipo in it, an puncture it with a carpetknife in the salty water. It can be safely trown away as garbage afterwards.

[saltydon]

I soldered leads on a car headlight unit that the lowbeam had burned out and put deans on the other end. Simply plug in the lipo in question until it discharges totaly and then cut the cells and throw in salt water. Safety takes a little time and sometimes some money but it is always less expensive than an accident. Cutting into a partially charged battery is not safe.

[Richard F.]

the apple i-pad has a 10 hour long charge on the batt. How did they do that at half an inch thick? yep you gueesd it lithium polymer.