Lipo Charging Fire

Even before I had heard of Jon's lipo saga, I had started making progress on replacing the lipo/voltage regulators set-ups on some of my numerous planes with LiFe. My thinking was - can be left in the model, less volatile, less electronics in model to go wrong, fast recharge similar to Lipo, keep things simple. I bought 10 LiFe TX packs of 2100 mah which come with standard RX/servo/ plugs so can directly replace NiMh packs. Virtually same weight as the lipos they are replacing.

I too will be changing my charging habits with Lipo. I have been doing it in the conservatory but a small fire as Jon had would be even worse in there.

Why doesn't the balance lead in your battery picture have 3 wires Phil? I have been using LiFe for many years and in my experience an unbalanced charge can cause them to fail very rapidly (NB I mostly used vapextech flat ones and not the round metal canister ones that Kevin Ross uses.)

John, I think the balance lead is on the bottom of the pack and has three wires.

This is a post I've just read on the BMFA Facebook page....

'Warning on charging batteries ,,i know its all been said before ,but this is a little different ,a friend who is not a modeller has just had about £25,000 or more ,worth of fire damage last night in his garden workshop ,he was working on his Lathe until 1 am this morning ,he went into his house to make a cup of tea ,20 minutes later he could see a red glow coming from his workshop ,he went to pull some gas containers out ,but the flames held him back ,the workshop has no timber in at all ,its all metal, a neighbour had raised the alarm ,the fire brigade put out the flames , every thing is ruined ,including three model train engines in the process of being made ,he is sure the fire started either in a battery charger or the cordless drill it was charging ,the investigator is pretty sure the battery caught fire ,the drill and charger have been charged many times without incident ,at this stage he is unsure of the type of battery ,ime sure many of us have charged tools like this overnight ,but when i saw the damage caused by a simple every day process i think we should all make sure we switch stuff of when unattended.'

I was charging a new 2S 2200 today when I noticed that one cell was sitting at 2.7V and the other at 4.1V - panic time! What it turned out to be was a poor joint on one of the balance leads, a bit of wiggling and it showed 4.1V. So if the joint had stayed dirty/loose then the charger would have pumped in another 1.4V (i.e the cell would have actually reached 5.5V and presumably blown up!
Why the charger failed to notice that the main load voltage was significantly higher than the total of the two cells I don't know. It is a proper bantam charger which I was led to believe was top of range.

That's a worry John, I know my Thunderpower chargers won't start a charge cycle if the voltage range is too large, wonder if it would stop if one went out of balance during the charge?