Explosion! Fire!

[vertman]

Boat suddenly stopped in the middle of the pond. Sat still for about 20 seconds and then BOOM! Blew the lid of my Revolt 30 about 10 feet into the air and then she burned..... was able to send my rescue boat out and tip it over to minimize fire damage.

Turns out the Lipos both exploded.

I had run my setup numerous times with some heat but nothing crazy. The esc was fire damaged but otherwise appeared fine.

Why would the lipos explode? How do I prevent that from happening again?

I have pics and will upload when I figure out how to do it.

[Luck as a Constant]

What batteries?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jim82]

always run the highest lipos c rating that you can afford and watch the temps!

[Chilli]

The odds of both Lipo's going at the exact same time are very low unless there was some sort of short circuit or catastrophic ESC problem. Perhaps a connector got hot and desoldered. Who Knows?? Let's wait until we see some pics.

[T.S.Davis]

Stock setup?

[ray schrauwen]

I'd say they missed a LVC and drained so low they went up. I did this 3 years ago in a 6S mono using 4500mah 6S2P 25-35C nano-techs.... Speedo survived to run the next season but, it too went up in smoke from the damage caused by the batt melt down the year earlier. If the cap blew on the esc it could cause the hatch to go up.

That or the ESC failed with a dead short???

[T.S.Davis]

I remember that Ray. Smelled fantastical.

Weird to have two packs fail like that.

I'm predicting over discharge too.

[T.S.Davis]

Not really fair to blame the cells. He's right. Not without more information.

Howeverrrrr.....r................I've discharged batteries right down until the EOS said 0%. Think I heard it laugh. My charger wouldn't recognize them as a 4s pack. Had to first charge a 4s pack at 3s until the voltage came up enough to charge at 4s. Those were high dollar cells. They didn't flame out and I finished the season with them.

Still doesn't mean it was the cells in this case. I'm just saying that better cells are more forgiving when you do something stupid to them.

[HangTheMan]

I'd say they missed a LVC and drained so low they went up. I did this 3 years ago in a 6S mono using 4500mah 6S2P 25-35C nano-techs.... Speedo survived to run the next season but, it too went up in smoke from the damage caused by the batt melt down the year earlier. If the cap blew on the esc it could cause the hatch to go up.

That or the ESC failed with a dead short???

I am asking because I don't know, but do LiPos really explode when discharged completely? I recently received two new Turnigy Heavy Duty batteries from HK that had individual cells at 0.97 volts. Kinda scary to thnk those could explode at anytime given that is completely dead voltage wise.

[Fella1340]

C'mon guys, the best explanation given the evidence is a spark flew off the motor, hit a cap which blew up scaring the hell out of the lipos making them explode. I stand by that, given the evidence.

[Peter A]

[vertman]

They were Zippy 30c 4000mah from HK running 6S on a 120a Turnigy ESC on a M445 prop. Little too much? Lol. She ran 52 mph on glass. That was before the explosion. I will post pics when I get to sit down at the computer. I was using 4mm Bullitt connections for the motor to esc and traxxas connectors on battery. They were all intact even after the fire.

[Bryan73]

Ouch! Never a good feeling when something like that happens. I have a good friend, who just last year, had a Gens Ace lipo in his plane explode during flight.

[kevinpratt823]

They were Zippy 30c 4000mah from HK running 6S on a 120a Turnigy ESC on a M445 prop. Little too much? Lol. She ran 52 mph on glass. That was before the explosion. I will post pics when I get to sit down at the computer. I was using 4mm Bullitt connections for the motor to esc and traxxas connectors on battery. They were all intact even after the fire.

What boat, what motor, and what kv?

[photohoward1]

Guys when the batts are discharge they have very little energy left. Trust me I know. When I'm done with my packs I shoot a mail through them with a framing nailer. If they are not charged very little happens. They smoke a bit. Fully charge them and hit it with a nail gun and then the fun starts. BTW. I do not in any way condone this activity. But it is fun.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Make-a-Wake]

Based on the fact that he had a 50 mph Revolt, I'm gonna say it was a 4074 or larger, spinning a largish(for the boat) prop and only 120 continuous amps available............with traxxas connectors, that it wasnt the batts fault, they were overmatched.

[jim82]

What boat, what motor, and what kv?

[olwarbirds]

They were Zippy 30c 4000mah from HK running 6S on a 120a Turnigy ESC on a M445 prop. Little too much? Lol. She ran 52 mph on glass. That was before the explosion. I will post pics when I get to sit down at the computer. I was using 4mm Bullitt connections for the motor to esc and traxxas connectors on battery. They were all intact even after the fire.

How many bottlenecks (impedance) points does it take to start a 4mm bullets, traxxas connectors, low c rated lipos, and mah unless they were in para, large prop, small esc...I bet the connectors melted on to the wires...glad nobody got physically hurt, I've seen lipo explosions up close and seen the damage done to hands etc... scarey !!!

[vertman]

It was/is a revolt 30 with a 1500kv proboat motor. I wasn't timing the run but the run was almost done. I would get about 4-5 minutes on those batteries.

So my question is when I rebuild I would like to keep that setup. Do I go with a 180a esc 6 mm bullets and higher c lipos to avoid this happening again?

[vertman]

Surprisingly none of the connectors appeared to have any damage. I'm wondering if maybe one of the wires was touching the packs and got so hot it melted through

[olwarbirds]

Watch running 6S on those PB motors the wires are a bit small and will cause probs too...yes higher c rated lipos for sure and a T-180...

[Make-a-Wake]

Bullets, 5.5 min, and 40c 5000 batts. You sure did squeeze alot of speed out of that motor.............put a strain on it i would imagine.

If you are going with a T180a ESC why not throw this motor in it and prop up with the extra power. Great motor, 4 poler too

http://hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store..._Inrunner.html

[vertman]

here are the pics

[Spartanator]

Every time I get comfortable with lipos something like this happens... lol
You people scare me!!!!
I have only stuck with SPC packs (ran Traxxas until they puffed). Just glad that this happened out there rather than your Garage. Your Revolt looks a little on the cooked side.

[kevinpratt823]

Based on the fact that he had a 50 mph Revolt, I'm gonna say it was a 4074 or larger, spinning a largish(for the boat) prop and only 120 continuous amps available............with traxxas connectors, that it wasnt the batts fault, they were overmatched.

Why do you say "only 120 continuous amps available"? The C rating only tells you how many amps they can sustain without damage to the cells, it doesn't limit the amount of amperage that they will put out, they certainly will put out more under heavy loads, they just may not survive it.

[Bryan73]

They are no doubt the best you can get for the price you pay...and better than alot of other batteries costing much more,

I mean no offense, but this is your opinion and personally, I am very much ok with that. However, there are many others who disagree and it can be annoying when every time batteries are mentioned, the revolectrix crusade switches to full alert.

[Peter A]

If you were to crunch numbers, based on the run time, wouldn't the batts have been well drained after 4-5 mins? To be fair none of us would run the zippy batts, especially only 4000's for such a long run time. If the lvc was set set at 3.0v the esc would have cut out well before the batts had drained too low. The most likely cause of the op's batt failure was that they were too run down too often. Vertman if you want long runtime you need to go 2p but you still have to know how much you taking out of your batts if you want them to survive. 80% max is recommended, which you can determine by how many mah go back in when charging. Sadly dude these exploded batteries are due to too much over discharging, they just couldn't take it anymore.
Unfortunately there has been a lot of bs in this thread that has not really been too helpful for the op either. C'mon guys it's not just about personal bents and opinions, but the guy just was trying to figure out where he screwed up so he could learn.

[Fella1340]

I am surprised by the speed numbers the op was getting. The stock revolt out of the box on 4s 5000 mah 40c batteries got me to 47mph with just adjusting setup(others have gone faster). Could a large part of the problem originated from running the stock motor on 6s. I know it's OK to do by the numbers but are people running stock revolt motors on 6s with sucess? It seemed to me the motor was giving all it had running 4s and 5s may have been workable on it. I never considered the motor suitable to run 6s.

[tlandauer]

He was running Proboat's 1500kv motor.that motor can be run on 6s, I too was surprised by that number, seems should be higher.

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk 2

[kevinpratt823]

He was running Proboat's 1500kv motor.that motor can be run on 6s, I too was surprised by that number, seems should be higher.

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk 2

On 6s that little motor may not have been able to get a m445 up to enough rpm....?

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2