Hey thanks for that... I dont think I own a LiPo battery?? Anyone?
So you don't have a phone? Or any kind of electronic gadget with a non-replaceable battery - say a little mp3 player or any tablet?
There is NO WAY I'm putting one of those in a metal tube anywhere near me!!
You've never owned an Ego? Or box mod like the MVP?
LiPos are everywhere. 99.9% of the time they're perfectly safe if you follow some very basic rules:
- don't puncture them
- don't over charge them
- don't drain them too far
- Never short them
The videos you see on youtube fall in to two basic categories:
- forced failure
- spontaneous failure in a buggy or plane
Forced failure speaks for itself - all mechanical external protection is removed and then the cells are deliberately abused until they fail spectacularly - if it isn't spectacular the video doesn't make it on to youtube.
Planes and buggys are hostile places, in buggys the cells are usually protected by a hard plastic shell somtimes masking a cell which has puffed up and gone bad, maybe the owner hasn't balanced the pack properly, in planes for weight reasons they're usually just protected by plastic shrink wrap. These are
very high drain situations. It's not unusual to be running a buggy using 400W at full throttle. The wires (12 awg or less, big and fat) get hot, that's normal, they have huge currents running through them. It's not unknown for connectors to melt (here's looking at you tamiya plugs). The speed controllers in my cars are rated at 100A for 2 cell series packs, yet LiPo fires are incredibly rare.
Vaping on the other hand is pretty gentle on them. They're run in short bursts discharging at relatively low currents well within thier specs, for vaping mostly they'll discarge at anything between 2 and 6A which is nothing for even a small LiPo.
Don't fall for the scaremongering, but do treat them with respect as you should any high drain battery.
