I Shot a .22 into a Lipo battery

[Rusty Heap]

A most excellent science experiment involving firearms, chemical heat, smoke, and fire in my back yard this morning.


watch for the secondary burst at the 20 second mark.

read the videos description for more details.

[Aurel]

I hope you did not inhale the smoke, very toxic...

[aschen]

Never had a lot of luck with the hobbyking batteries, though it is amazing how cheap they are.

[Jeff Higgins]

I was worried that you might miss it at such extreme range.

[nota]

so if you shoot a Prius
they burn

[LEAKYSEALS951]

So with a (edit) pellet gun and a $10 battery you pretty much illustrated what happened on flight 370.

[Rusty Heap]

Originally Posted by Aurel

I hope you did not inhale the smoke, very toxic...

Slick Willy always did piss me off for being such a lying sack of @#$^ lawyer with his answers.


Yeah yeah, I remember my first beer, but I didn't swallow. (I bet Hilary doesn't either) gads that's a scary visual

[Esel Mann]

As they say, it's the smoke inside the electronics that makes them work.

[zakthor]

Some hearsay that I'd love have have debunked:

I met a guy that builds lipos for some military systems. He told me he tried the same thing with a larger battery from his company. Hunting rifle caused a dramatic explosion and that 50 YARDS was the min safe distance not including the toxic gasses. Said flame and flash were white. Went on about how he cant believe these things are allowed in cars, let along airplanes.

Once there is a short inside the battery it will get hot enough for the entire thing to melt down and there's not much that can be done to stop it. Chain reaction causes all the battery's energy to be released either slowly or quickly. The larger the short (internal damage) the quicker the discharge and the bigger the explosion.

He said the problem with the 777 battery was that the battery design was faulty and used only a thin layer of plastic to insulate + and -, when that membrane fails battery melts down. He said the cell separation needs to be seriously engineered because it is all that protects from an explosion.

I doubt the FAA and Boeing are so incompetent so would like to hear the rebuttal.

[aschen]

Planes are also full of hundreds of tons of jet-A as well. I think the total energy of the 777 battery can be contained in a couple gallons of the stuff.

I also don't believe they would use polymer electrodes (the po in lipo) for plane or car batteries. Im not trying to take anything away from the dangers of these batteries. Its obvious they must be handled with care, but your friend either shot a BIG (like house sized) battery or has a very conservative definition of safe distance. Or I guess if the bat was contained in a pressure vessel there would be much increased danger

[mikester]

Originally Posted by aschen

Never had a lot of luck with the hobbyking batteries, though it is amazing how cheap they are.

Really? I have had nothing but good experience with them and I have quite a few.

There is a US supplier that's really good now though that I have been using a little more.

RC Airplanes - Radio Control Airplanes and Helicopters, Spektrum, FMS, RocHobby, Freewing, Dynam, Parkzone, Eflite, Flyzone, Hitec, Jets, Gliders, Warbirds, Biplanes but the batteries are still Chinese. HK batteries are pretty good but HK isn't the best place to buy from overall. They have a pretty mediocre reputation but I will say my own experience with them has been quite good and they have fixed every problem with any product I have had from them. It's only been 2 out of probably 30 orders but still.

[aschen]

I was being a bit cheeky, I started with "a .22 is a fate too good for turnigy, and the dialed it back".


Honestly, for what ive paid for turnigy packs in the past they have been fine. Some of them have gone a bit puffy on me and some of them are pretty high in IF but I dont take very good care of them admitedly.

I have been using all Glacier lately but some of them are starting to puff on me a bit lately as well.

[tcar]

Originally Posted by LEAKYSEALS951

So with a (edit) pellet gun and a $10 battery you pretty much illustrated what happened on flight 370.

That was a 777... no lipo's.



aschen? zakthor? I assume those are typos and you meant 787.

[aschen]

truth is I hardly know the difference between the two and I carried the typo forward

[aschen]

again I dont think the planes would have polymer electrodes (lipoly) strictly speaking

[Aurel]

Not to brag, but I may have been one the first in the world to perform safety tests on Lipo batteries (shorting, nail penetration, hot chamber). That was at Bellcore, 17 years ago, and I was working with the guys who invented those batteries. The difference with 18650s is that they can be made very large, so one cell going off can liberate more energy than an 18650. Other than that, there is nothing nothing fundamentally different from an 18650.

[LEAKYSEALS951]

Originally Posted by tcar

That was a 777... no lipo's.



aschen? zakthor? I assume those are typos and you meant 787.

I was referring to it's cargo of Li-ion batteries which I thought was even more energy dense than lipo batteries, not the plane's intrinsic batteries. Unless there's some law against transporting Lipos which I am unaware of.

[cstreit]

Souk and I did this with a 9mm. Didn't do squat, I was so disappointed.

[mikester]

So what was the point of this 'experiment' exactly? I mean you abused the lipo and it did what lipos do when they are abused. Frankly I'm surprised it went as calmly as it did as I've seen them go much less so into that good night...

It was fun right?

[zakthor]

I'm sorry. I don't know lipo from lion and typed the wrong plane too, he was discussing the 787 battery fires. Guys battery are about the size of a pair of truck batteries and very high energy for their size. He didn't say what they are used for. Guy was Canadian.

He said the battery went with a big boom and flash when he shot it. Was much more violent than he expected. He did say they build a very secure container for the battery.