Disaster waiting to happen in Zippy battery

bobale

bobale

100 W
Joined
Jun 5, 2011
Messages
256
Location
Serbia
In the pictures below you can see casing and one cell from Zippy Flightmax 5000mAh 20C battery:




I don't know whether it can be seen clearly from the pictures above, but the casing is not processed properly after molding, so the protruding thingy left is pretty sharp, and it looks like it could have easily punctured this cell.

This serves as reminder that we're buying cheap Chineses products with questionable QC.
 
That's not good. I can't advocate hardcases because they hide puffing. Some cells can come puffed from the factory ( about 1% of cells, or less ) and are firebombs in waiting, essentially.

If you buy hardcase packs, do remove the cases.
 
Turnigy 4S hardacases usually separate easily, and most do on their own, under vibrations and being carried around. But, this Zippy 2S was sealed pretty well, we had to put in effort in order to take out one cell we needed. Since it was that much bother to take case apart, I'm sure it would puncture cell before case burst open if cell were to puff for any reason.
 
I always advocate removing hardcase from any ebike battery. Not only does it end up saving weight and space, just like nep said, it helps with detecting puffing cells. If you duct tape wrap the pack, you'll see puffed cells pretty easily if you leave the bottom open to view each cell sideways.
 
One could reasonably say that all of us have a disaster waiting to happen with our HK lipo bike packs. Spotty QC, then we pack on a large quantity of it so the flame ball is bigger if it happens.

Just do what commonsense tells you helps reduce the risks.

Sort your packs, chuck the wonky ones.

Do better than to just tape naked packs to the frame, so you don't puncture em.

Follow the lipo rules for overcharge, overdischarge.

Try not to dead short em with funky wiring.
 
Nothing's wrong with buying hardcase packs. Best wh/$ value, and removing the case gets easy after doing it a few times. I just wish they sold 6s hardcase at the same cost of the infamous 4s ones.
 
My zippys are holding up fine.. perhaps a bad batch got through quality control in china
 
Ypedal said:
It's just not as dramatic when your snow shovel handle breaks.
Click to expand...
Except for teh time you're using it to hold up the corner of the fridge while you get the cat toy out from under it with your fingers. ;) :shock:
 
I've been a pro shovel breaker for 40 years. Sometimes when it breaks, you billyclub yourself in the face if you were pulling on the shovel.

But it doesn't compare to a good lipo fire unless you happen to jab your eye out with the broken handle. :lol:

I'm not planning on buying any more 20c personally. So the low price of those cheap hardcases won't likely lure me to buy any.

Hmm, mabye somebody needs to make hardcases sized for 5s and 6s 2p. :idea: That would be kind of cool.
 
or when they start making 10 ah packs.....imagine..just having to buy 2 packs and it would be so easy to wire up, pretty much no rat nest at all.
 
Wish they made every type, or at least a few choices, in 2p, 3p, 4p. 3s 2p and 2s 2p alone would cover lots of configurations. I don't want the pack to be too large and expensive, not with a 10% doa rate.
 
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