Custom built lipo charging cabinet for x-Maxx 4s lipos

[hallamnet]

Hi all.

Just thought I’d share my take on making a safe lipo charging station after a bit of an issue with some Youme Power lipos.

So I have my first lipo fire today when charging some Youme Power lipos. All were balanced well and in good condition but for some reason, one of the batteries started to swell a lot and checked the output of my charger and all was normal. Unplugged the charger and the battery was still expanding.

When I charge my batteries, I charge in the middle of the garage floor not near anything flammable on a concrete floor just in case of this. I have flown drones for years abs never had a battery fire!

So I got my emergency bucket of sand, kicked the battery to the middle of the drive way and waited. 30 seconds later, the magical smoke started escaping followed by a whopping great flame. I let it burn out for a while then doused the battery in sand. After a long while, probably 20 mins, I but the battery in some salt water and killed it off.

Never had anything like this happen before and would advise people to stay away from Youme Power batteries.

This experience made me up my charging security and decided to make my own lipo charging station and used an old comms cabinet I had lying around.

Here’s my attempt:-




This should help keep the flames at bay and plan to get some old tiles to separate the batteries.

I have always used an ammo crate to store batteries but you can never be to safe when charging lipos!

Hope this could be a help for an idea of a lipo charging safe.

All the best,

Hal


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[Domineazy]

Hi all.

Just thought I’d share my take on making a safe lipo charging station after a bit of an issue with some Youme Power lipos.

So I have my first lipo fire today when charging some Youme Power lipos. All were balanced well and in good condition but for some reason, one of the batteries started to swell a lot and checked the output of my charger and all was normal. Unplugged the charger and the battery was still expanding.

When I charge my batteries, I charge in the middle of the garage floor not near anything flammable on a concrete floor just in case of this. I have flown drones for years abs never had a battery fire!

So I got my emergency bucket of sand, kicked the battery to the middle of the drive way and waited. 30 seconds later, the magical smoke started escaping followed by a whopping great flame. I let it burn out for a while then doused the battery in sand. After a long while, probably 20 mins, I but the battery in some salt water and killed it off.

Never had anything like this happen before and would advise people to stay away from Youme Power batteries.

This experience made me up my charging security and decided to make my own lipo charging station and used an old comms cabinet I had lying around.

Here’s my attempt:-




This should help keep the flames at bay and plan to get some old tiles to separate the batteries.

I have always used an ammo crate to store batteries but you can never be to safe when charging lipos!

Hope this could be a help for an idea of a lipo charging safe.

All the best,

Hal


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Glad nobody got hurt and no damage done to property. Did you use regular table salt?

Domineazy

[Juanmacine]

Hi all.

Just thought I’d share my take on making a safe lipo charging station after a bit of an issue with some Youme Power lipos.

So I have my first lipo fire today when charging some Youme Power lipos. All were balanced well and in good condition but for some reason, one of the batteries started to swell a lot and checked the output of my charger and all was normal. Unplugged the charger and the battery was still expanding.

When I charge my batteries, I charge in the middle of the garage floor not near anything flammable on a concrete floor just in case of this. I have flown drones for years abs never had a battery fire!

So I got my emergency bucket of sand, kicked the battery to the middle of the drive way and waited. 30 seconds later, the magical smoke started escaping followed by a whopping great flame. I let it burn out for a while then doused the battery in sand. After a long while, probably 20 mins, I but the battery in some salt water and killed it off.

Never had anything like this happen before and would advise people to stay away from Youme Power batteries.

This experience made me up my charging security and decided to make my own lipo charging station and used an old comms cabinet I had lying around.

Here’s my attempt:-




This should help keep the flames at bay and plan to get some old tiles to separate the batteries.

I have always used an ammo crate to store batteries but you can never be to safe when charging lipos!

Hope this could be a help for an idea of a lipo charging safe.

All the best,

Hal


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Wowwww, this charging station looks awesome

[hallamnet]

Hi Domineazy

Thanks for the reply.

Just normal table salt. I bought a Massive tub off of Amazon for salting some weeds away and came in hand for a lipo killer.

If you have a lipo you need to discharge and get rid of, just drop in a bucket of salty water and leave for a few days and it will discharge them and kill them a safe way.

Here’s another view of the lipo safe. Still needs some finishing touches but is functional....




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[hallamnet]

Wowwww, this charging station looks awesome

Thanks man.

Just an old comms cabinet I had in storage. Not too sure how the glass will fair up in a fire but there’s nothing in front of it so should be ok.




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[Domineazy]

Hi Domineazy

Thanks for the reply.

Just normal table salt. I bought a Massive tub off of Amazon for salting some weeds away and came in hand for a lipo killer.

If you have a lipo you need to discharge and get rid of, just drop in a bucket of salty water and leave for a few days and it will discharge them and kill them a safe way.

Here’s another view of the lipo safe. Still needs some finishing touches but is functional....




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Oh I see. That's good to know. I have an SMC battery which one of the lead wires broke off at a solder joint so I'd rather get rid of it instead of trying to fix it.
Looks good so far. So you're saying that it began swelling when you were charging it or at the end of charging? Way to reuse old stuff! have some Youme batteries that I've been using and they seem fine but now I'm a little uneasy about em after your post lol. I'm hoping that they will be fine. Definitely taking more precautions moving forward either way.

Domineazy

[hallamnet]

While in the middle of a charge at 5amp when it happened.

Before I unplugged, the cell values were around 3.98 so still a fair bit more to go before they were fully charged.

I never had a good run with my set of 6200mah Youme’s. That had massive voltage lag and would not last as long as my 5500mah batteries from a make I cannot mention as it’s been starred out of my posts before. But the model of batteries are the rapid series in a hard case


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[Domineazy]

While in the middle of a charge at 5amp when it happened.

Before I unplugged, the cell values were around 3.98 so still a fair bit more to go before they were fully charged.

I never had a good run with my set of 6200mah Youme’s. That had massive voltage lag and would not last as long as my 5500mah batteries from a make I cannot mention as it’s been starred out of my posts before. But the model of batteries are the rapid series in a hard case


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Dang that's crazy man.

I wonder why that happened, is something bad in the pack?

The ones I have lasted about 35-40 minutes and haven't gotten puffy or anything. Maybe yours was a bad batch. Interesting. Those costed quite a bit for me at the time so I went with the ones mentioned.

Domineazy

[afreek1000]

Oh I see. That's good to know. I have an SMC battery which one of the lead wires broke off at a solder joint so I'd rather get rid of it instead of trying to fix it.
Looks good so far. So you're saying that it began swelling when you were charging it or at the end of charging? Way to reuse old stuff! have some Youme batteries that I've been using and they seem fine but now I'm a little uneasy about em after your post lol. I'm hoping that they will be fine. Definitely taking more precautions moving forward either way.

Domineazy

Just a heads up Domineazy,

I also have SMC batteries and also having the issue of power leads breaking loose at the solder joint. . I sent an email with a picture to SMC, and they said it’s covered under the 1 year warranty. I got to keep the old battery which I re-soldered, and they sent me a new one free of charge.

It seems like they may be having a bad batch of poor soldering. It’s happened to about 3 batteries so far. Though, I must say their warranty process is stellar.

[ReglarGuy]

I really like your com cabinet charging station. I had a Lipo go crazy on me once. Mine didn't flame up, but it looked like a big fire works sparkler, and it smoked like crazy. I do my charging in the basement on a aluminum cooking sheet that has steel charging boxes on it.

When my Lipo went up I threw it in a bucket, and tossed it outside. I was amazed how much smoke came out. My whole back yard was filled with super black smoke. Here's a picture of my charging station. I use steel cash boxes, and only charge when I'm working on something down stair, or working out.

[Domineazy]

Just a heads up Domineazy,

I also have SMC batteries and also having the issue of power leads breaking loose at the solder joint. . I sent an email with a picture to SMC, and they said it’s covered under the 1 year warranty. I got to keep the old battery which I re-soldered, and they sent me a new one free of charge.

It seems like they may be having a bad batch of poor soldering. It’s happened to about 3 batteries so far. Though, I must say their warranty process is stellar.

Same lead as mine! Lol. They also sent me one as well. I don't know where to re-solder the lead and I dont have the big heat shrink for the battery either. But I'm glad they help us out. Based on their customer service alone, I bought 2 more sets from them lol.

Domineazy

[Juanmacine]

Just a heads up Domineazy,

I also have SMC batteries and also having the issue of power leads breaking loose at the solder joint. . I sent an email with a picture to SMC, and they said it’s covered under the 1 year warranty. I got to keep the old battery which I re-soldered, and they sent me a new one free of charge.

It seems like they may be having a bad batch of poor soldering. It’s happened to about 3 batteries so far. Though, I must say their warranty process is stellar.

Excellent support service for SMC,

[ReglarGuy]

Just for the heck of it, I looked in Amazon to see if you could get a metal cabinet like Hallamnet's. Yep, you sure can. It's called a network cabinet, and they go for around 180 bucks. I think it's a great idea, but a little pricey. I'd like to do one though, someday.

Hallamnet, might I make a suggestion. I would take the bricks out, and make an aluminum cover (that covered top, sides, and bottom) for your wooden shelf. It would give you a more professional look, and if one of your batteries ever did catch on fire, any debris that fell to the bottom of your cabinet wouldn't ignite the unprotected bottom of your wood. I did something similar with my battery storage shelves.





From there, I'd mount my battery chargers on top of your cabinet, and make and mount a 2 or 4 electrical outlet box (with an ON/Off kill switch and a single outlet plug extension cord), and mount that on top of your cabinet too. Ooops, almost forgot, I'd also close up the back with a fitted piece of aluminum sheet metal. My thought here is, making your cabinet a self contained, fire proof enclosure that can quickly be unplugged an moved in the event that you ever had to.

Down the road (when I make mine) I'll also put handles on the sides, and will make heat shields that will separate each battery from the other. What I have now works, but the disadvantage to my present charging setup is; if I ever have to quickly get a battery outside, I have to disconnect my charger leads from my cash box. I also, don't have any separation protection for my 4 batteries in each of my charging boxes. With my setup now, if one battery goes in one of my charging boxes, all four will likely be damaged.



See what I mean about no separation. With your network cabinet, and my suggestions we could all have the perfect battery charging setup.

[hallamnet]

That’s awesome!

Brilliant design and space saving to. Gives me an idea of using an old 2u rack mount server case mounted in rails under my worktop.

With the comms cab, it’s not finished as of yet. We are tilling our kitchen at the moment and will have some tiles left at the end (60cm x 30cm) and plan to have one on top of the wood the bricks sit on and tiles in between the bricks to create 4 cells. This should act as a fire block to stop it cooking all of the batteries.

Also, for an auto cut off in case of a, “magic smoke event”, I have my house and garage hooked up with a Fibaro home automation system and planning to use one of the smoke detectors inside the cab or on top near a vent that will then kill the z wave plug the chargers are plugged in to, alert me on my phone what’s going on while sending a photo from my cctv camera in the garage to my phone and running a custom lighting scene in the house.

It is a bit of geeky way to do it but if the infrastructures there, why not use it. The cabinet is already Alexa voice controlled and can be turned off just by saying a quick phrase, “Alexa, turn off/on lipo charger”.

I will post an update when I finally get it finished.


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[ReglarGuy]

Sounds super cool! Like I was telling you, I'd like to make one too, but I'll probably wait and see what I can do this winter sometime.

[ReglarGuy]

Found a 22 x 18 x 14 on eBay for 70 bucks, and a 24 x 19 x 15 on Amazon for 100 bucks. I think I'm going to make me one of these rascals.

[Dmarzke]

I used to charge in a fireproof bag but got annoying

I put an 18 inch square piece of floor tile and space the batteries apart on the tile. It’s in my garage so smoke is not an issue.

Good thing it didn’t fail while being discharged.


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[hallamnet]

I used to use lipo charging bags until I watched this...

https://youtu.be/tavpXgmL16M

I’d be fuming if it took out my rc


To the mooooon!

[ReglarGuy]

Yeah, that guy made 3 videos. I seen them on another post. Like you said, really opens your eyes if you've never seen one go off before.

[hallamnet]

So, bit of an update.

Made a metal shelf for the cabinet rather than a wooden one, custom made some balance leads and created some cells using some old tile off cuts and this is the latest version of my Lipo charging safe....




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[hallamnet]

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[Juanmacine]

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Looks very nice, mate.

[ReglarGuy]

I was all ready to buy one of those cabinets I seen for 60 bucks on eBay, but before I could get it, it was gone. I'm going to get one eventually, though. I'd like to also install an exhaust hose going from the cabinet to the outside world. That would be the ultimate! Your cabinet turned out really good, great job!

[hallamnet]

Thanks RG!

Shame you missed out on one on eBay. They do make good lipo cabinets!

I’m still adding to mine. It’s not finish as of yet. Still got a few phases to go and I must admit, a fan is one but will look at doing that later in the summer.

Yesterday, I fitted some temperature probes to each bay/cell of the cabinet along with a magnetic door sensor to turn on the cabinet when the door is opened. All controlled by my Fibaro HC2. I have created a few scripts to alert me if the temperature goes up rapidly by 5°c by push notifications to my mobile and to flash a few lights in the house.




I have also got this on order to hook up to the last free input on my universal sensor:- https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B089GPPQ..._K7t6FbVF8DH8H

But here’s another latest photo of the cabinet:-




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[ReglarGuy]

Yeah, but I'm sure another one will come up. If I may ask, what's the dimensions of your cabinet?

[hallamnet]

Hey RG.

It’s a 9U 450mm deep comms cabinet.

I will try and get the external measurements for you tonight.




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[hallamnet]

Hey RG.

It’s a 9U 450mm deep comms cabinet.

I will try and get the external measurements for you tonight.

** Sorry, got the wrong cabinet size. It is actually a 200mm deep cabinet**

Only dawned on me a short while ago that the new one I bought was deeper 450mm as I could not fit a UniFi switch in it. Still need to get the external dimensions for you and will try tomorrow. Been a bit hectic today




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[ReglarGuy]

I've got plenty of time, so don't feel like you have to rush.

[hallamnet]

Finally managed to get the measurements.

60cm wide
25cm deep
37.5cm high

Hope it helps!


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