Jetpainter;18222 wrote: I've stayed away from LiPo's other than some little ones for my Crack Pitts, but just a few months ago I bought a Trex 550 helicopter that uses 6S 5300 mah batteries. My first call was to a friend that Is sharp as hell and flys a lot of electrics. My question was what do I need to charge those batteries safely and correctly. He recommended a PowerLab 6 or 8. I bought the 8 and the power supply he recommended and I've been thrilled so far.
I am paranoid as hell about having LiPo's in my house. I NEVER charge them at home. I keep them in LiPo bags and in a well vented ammo box in the garage, in a place I think they would do the least amount of carnage.
When I charge them at the field I don't use a bag, but if they go off there they would only take out a wooden bench and my charger. The thing i don't like about the bag is you cant see if there is something bad happening until it's too late to do anything about it, but I probably should use one.
There's a few stigmas when it comes to lithium batteries:
-Lithium batteries
CAN ignite
when not used properly.
-In all likelihood, you won't have a lipo fire.
-When on the internet (especially places like RC Groups where there are literally MILLIONS of people) you can't assume every post about lipo fires will automatically relate directly to you. If you tally up the posts about lipo fires vs the actual number of modelers that use lipo packs, you'll find that lipo fires are a rare occurrence.
I'll use the 'Lipo fires are real!!!!' thread from RC Groups as an example. There are 2607 posts. You can remove half of them to account for repeat posters. You can remove an additional 500 for random commentary or 'i saw it happen one time' posts. Take out an additional 400 posts discussing safety techniques to prevent a fire from spreading. In actuality, there are probably less than 400 posts in there of people having a first hand lipo fire. Now take into account that there is 534,257 members there, half of which likely have a lipo battery. We'll do some educated guessing and say there are probably close to 200k members that actively use a lithium battery and have posted their experiences at some point. So 400 people out of 200,000. That's basically 0.2% of people on RC Groups have actually had a lipo fire in person.
My big brain makes an edumacated guess that 1-2% of modelers have actually had a lipo fire experience.
I've never had a fire. I've never had a battery get hot enough to vent. Until very recently, in my 12+ years of modelling, I've never actually seen a lipo go up in flames first hand (and before that I've only seen one go up in smoke one time in person). Just because it happened to someone doesn't mean it'll happen to you.
So my advice is to stop worrying that something bad will happen, and just focus on the important aspect: Safety third. Confusing? Good. No, I'm not insane, but all of these 'rules' that we have for lipo batteries are good and all but they are not a replacement for good old fashion common sense. Not crossing battery leads, don't over charge or discharge, don't leave them in the sun, don't mount around sharp objects, etc. Mainly, nobody cares more about safety than you do, so do rely on yourself to set in motion common sense practices to help make a safer environment.
Regarding the lipo bag- if something bad is going to happen, it's already too late to save the pack by the time it shows signs of damage.
