You should be!!!
https://au.prime7.yahoo.com/n1/video/-/watch/28683777/fire-gutts-hobby-shop/
Sadly you have to watch the ad.
yawn… seriously this has been beat to death several times…
lithium ion batteries are in everything we have and as long as hobbyists can buy them, they will be capable of burning stuff down with defective or wrong chargers, and no one can stop someone from damaging a battery…
Greg
I have to agree with Greg. As you must well know the most innocuous products can be abused with explosive results. Even the benign ni-cad battery and lead acid can be dangerous. As far as I know without much effort most anything can be “weaponized” by defects or sheer stupidity. Be careful, it’s a dangerous world out there!
Ignoring the instructions and sheer stupidity are usually the cause of these battery problems.
(dropping them does not do them any good either…I can vouch for that…it puffed up and I slung it out into the garden very smartly!!)(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)
Got rid of it.
There is a quite glaring difference between the Li-Ion batteries we Garden RR’ers use and the unprotected Li-Po packs that are usually the centre of news stories about them exploding and causing fires.
The exploding Li-Po packs do not, as far as I know, ever have protection circuits built in.
I understand Li-Ion packs can suffer the same fate but I would appreciate being given examples of Li-Ion packs that have exploded or become incendiary devices.
Tony:
". . . I would appreciate being given examples of Li-Ion packs that have exploded or become incendiary devices. "
Here’s a few from a search for “fire li-ion battery phone” -
Why lithium batteries keep catching fire
I guess I should have been more specific.
I meant examples of hobby use Li-Ion batteries that have exploded or caught on fire.
Tony Walsham said:
I guess I should have been more specific.
I meant examples of hobby use Li-Ion batteries that have exploded or caught on fire.
Spoilsport. I have to confess that I haven’t heard of anything when safety precautions are in place.
I’ve not heard of any railroad type fires. I have seen a couple of li-ion R/C aircraft crash fires but that’s not quite the same.
For what it’s worth all of my engines are li-ion batteries and are charged insitu. However being reasonably paranoid, I charge them in a rural mailbox and the charger is plugged into a timer. The timer automatically shuts off after 3 hours, the longest that it’s ever taken to recharge. I have a piece of plywood cut to the dimensions of the box with rail slots, I place the engine on the wood and slide it into the box. Been doing this for a couple of years now and it works well and it eases most of my paranoia.
Good solution Mark.
I guess what I am trying to point out, and will keep on doing so, is that there are good Lithium batteries and not so good Lithium batteries for our uses.
Those with protection circuits built into the packs seem to be safe and reliable.
Not so Li-Po packs. I have never seen any Li-Po packs with protection circuits built in.
Whilst I understand that a pack having a protection circuit built in is no guarantees of safety, those with protection pcb’s anecdotally are much safer than those without such protection.
It seems to be the old adage. Caveat Emptor.
Curious. Why won’t they put a PC board in LiPo batteries? Makes no sense.
After years of RC flying I can tell you Li-Po’s are way to unstable for RC trains. I have seen planes explode in flight due to a battery gone bad and one guy at my local field lost his Van due to a bad battery. Once you notice a Li-Po “Puff” up its time to give it a salt water bath and kill it. If one of those “Puffs” up in a battery car you now have a rolling bomb and this bomb burns white hot.
Hi Steve, the reason there is no circuit board inside the “Flight Pack” Li-Po battery for r/c airplanes is the circuit board could shut off the battery to protect it. Of course this would cause the plane to loose power. The r/c plane guys prefer to remove the Li-Po pack and connect it to a cell balancing charger.
Cordless Renovation is evaluating Li-Po for use in the smaller scales. Already in smaller scales of On3 and HO they are using three Li-Po 3.7v 850 mAh packs with a circuit board to regulate output to 12v and provide on-board charging from the track.
As Tony has stated safety is always first. All Cordless Renovation lithium packs include a PCB for protection. As an installer it is good and bad when the circuit board shuts down the battery pack due to miss wiring. The bad is I have to return the pack to be reset. Once the PCB is tripped the pack is dead.
I still provide Nickel Metal Hydride batteries as they can fit into irregular locations than lithium packs. Today the Lithium prices are the same or less than Nickel Metal Hydride.
With the polarized connector, a PCB manufactured in the battery pack and using the proper smart charger to regulate the charge cycle I believe we can take advantage of the benefits from the Lithium battery.
Don Sweet
RCS of New England
The PCB/PCM’s (protection circuit board/module) afforded most Lithium-Ion batteries are simple devices that are incorporated into assembled battery packs by battery resellers. It’s not common in the R/C world but there are battery assembler/resellers that offer integral PCM’s for Lithium Polymer batteries same as those used in Lithium-Ion batteries. The primary difference is the ampacity requirement of said PCM. R/C Li-Po batteries as compared to Li-Ion batteries can provide MASSIVE current potential, accordingly such a device must be matched to the battery and current requirements in play. Trains as a rule do not require high discharge amperage numbers to operate unlike power hog R/C equipment, accordingly a Li-Po fitted with a typical low capacity PCM is doable (I have a few examples of these setups in play myself). Far as I know high amperage PCM’s are uncommon and not essential when a modern ESC is in play.
Li-Po’s are generally coupled with radio control ESC’s (electronic speed controls), these ESC’s offer similar if not more sophisticated battery protection than the atypical PCM/PCB of Li-Ion batteries. These features combined with sophisticated balance chargers and balance charge algorithms offer the MOST head room for safety and battery maintenance.
Common ESC attributes:
Auto battery voltage selection, multiple low voltage warnings alerting the operator the battery is nearly expired; one common method is for the ESC to throttle down to idle alerting operator and subsequently allowing power to be reapplied after cycling the throttle stick to idle and there is short circuit protection and much more.
Lithium-Ion and Lithium Poly batteries are essentially comprised of the same materials, either chemistry has the same potential for failure modes
when properly utilized or not.
If you like numbers, imagine this, Lithium Polymer batteries out sale all other like size/capacity technologies combined by a notable margin. Li-Po batteries are powering your cell phones, tablets and so on. Protection circuits are generally an integral part of said device. There are
millions of Li-Po’s in the field, we only seem to hear of small number of failures glorified by the unknown. The proper care and feeding of any Lithium technology is generally suspect when we here of problems associated herein.
Utilizing a properly configured balance charger together with some sort of fire safe enclosure is as good as it gets for battery charging safety.
Problem is human beings make mistakes, become complacent and don’t thoroughly understand how to use said charger/batteries and recognize anomalies thereof.
Since we don’t know what failure mode was realized of the Hobby shop noted by this threads O.P., we can only assume proper safety measures were NOT in play. Things that come to mind; was there a safe charging enclosure, was a balance charger, a standard charger or a smart charger in play, was the charger properly configured for the battery under charge (most common shortcoming), what was the physical status of said battery and there are more unknowns herein. There is NO reason for this to have happened if the operator had followed known practices and fully utilized the integral safety features of smart balance chargers.
Michael
I wouldnt call it wary, I call it aware of what they can do. I stay away from the Li-po batteries in my RC cars, running NImh instead. For my G scale I am using Lith-ion with a matching smart charger. Both packs, a Tenergy and a Cordless Renovations, have build in low voltage cut off circuits. But as soon as I see a decreased speed or slowing in my tight curves, they get recharged. I leave both batteries installed onboard as its a bit of a job to get to them and remove them. I do not charge them when we are not home, nor do I charge the RC car batteries when we are not home an all batteries are allowed to cool down before recharging. Even the RC car batteries have thier own dedicated smart charger that can detect shorts, and will cut off once peak charge is attained. Mike
It’s a sad day when a fire occurs and the lost of property or a loved one happens, but…
I think we “all” are missing the point. The point is! What was the amp hour in which he charged his 30C Lipo battery-pack at? That’s the hole point! If I was the Fire Marshal, that’s the first thing I would look at! He stated in the newscast that he put the battery-pack on charge, then went to the rest room; he came back and his store was on fire? That’s 10 minutes or less! 95% of all lithium fires happen within the first 15 minutes of charging a battery, and 99% of all fires that occur when charging a lithium battery are due to operator error.
So, let’s just say he “inadvertently” put the 30C Lipo on charge and forgot it was set at 2 amps for a nickel pack that he previously charged an hour before? Let’s just say! That’s direct current instead of pulsating, which in return means…good night nurse! The battery pack got to hot and melted everything around the casing, resulting in a fire!
Here’s what I don’t understand? Why would someone post this topic in this way, (I totally agree that we need to educate our fellow enthusiasts more about lithium battery-packs) but, in my mind, the intent seemed to be for two reasons and two reasons only, because of his responses! 1st - self benefit, and converting customers to nickel. 2nd - no understanding how lithium cells work.
You know, instead of getting everyone railed up on a fire at a hobby store and blaming it on the chemistry of the battery-pack, in which the end user could have been at fault? Maybe the post’e should have done a little more homework and/or du-diligence prior to posting this topic?
Rick Isard said:
SNIPHere’s what I don’t understand? Why would someone post this topic in this way, (I totally agree that we need to educate our fellow enthusiasts more about lithium battery-packs) but, in my mind, the intent seemed to be for two reasons and two reasons only, because of his responses! 1st - self benefit, and converting customers to nickel. 2nd - no understanding how lithium cells work.
You know, instead of getting everyone railed up on a fire at a hobby store and blaming it on the chemistry of the battery-pack, in which the end user could have been at fault? Maybe the post’e should have done a little more homework and/or du-diligence prior to posting this topic?
Mr Isard.
In the initial posting I made no comment as to one type of Li battery being any better or worse safety wise, than the other.
I merely stated that consumers should be wary of Li-Po batteries. After all, if a hobby store owner can get it wrong when he should know better, you of all people should know what can happen with consumers.
I then asked questions and have concluded from the replies that Li-Ion packs with protection are safer than Li-Po packs without protection.
Is that correct or not?
There is no “self benefit” as you put it and I am not promoting Nickel over any other chemistry.
I respectfully suggest you get your facts right about the posting and stop with the cheap shots.
I would also like to add this . . . We are here to help our fellow enthusiasts guide and/or make it easier for them to operate their trains!
Thanks for your support!
Rick Isard said:
I would also like to add this . . . We are here to help our fellow enthusiasts guide and/or make it easier for them to operate their trains!
Thanks for your support!
I take it that is meant as an unqualified apology.
Thank you.