So last night I had a little incident with one of my modified flashlight, it was a PK1000 inspired build.
The torch contained an 8s2p lipo battery (Turnigy 20C) of 10Ah / 33.6v fully charged, running a PAR 64 1000W GE 4556 landing light, a PHD-X1 voltage regulator had high settings of 28 and 30.5 volts.
It is quite an embarrassing story, as we have all read stories of liPo failures, and countered with luckily I know better than that, well in this instance my judgment was somewhat off.
The story starts eight weeks ago, I had just finished building the torch, I was so keen to use it that I did not build in an external emergency/storage power cut off, I intended to do this later, however I was called away to work early (internationally). I figured that the quiescent current of the torch would not run it flat in the eight or so weeks i would be gone, this was not the case, I returned a few days ago and found that the cell voltage of the lipos was 0.7v each. The batteries should have been disposed of at this point.
I removed the batteries, slowly balance charged and discharged them, they appeared to have maintained 80-90 percent of their capacity rating, and did not show signs of swelling.
I installed them in the torch and discharged them fairly rapidly, then inspected them, still no problem, I charged and discharged them like this twice, all was well.
The next night some friends came around for some drink's :party: (I'm 23 years old) by the time we were quite merry I grabbed the flashlight and put it on to charge, luckily I sat it next to me where I could see it, the drinks and stories continued, I then heard a fizz and looked down at my torch, DAMMN the lantern body has quite obviously expanded, the torch is quickly placed outside, at this point I will blame alcohol for affecting my judgement, I just left the torch and went to rejoin the party... a few minutes later I smelled burning plastic, luckily there was a fire blanket at hand, as fire was somewhat substantial.
The below photo is the remains of the torch shown above.
The torch contained an 8s2p lipo battery (Turnigy 20C) of 10Ah / 33.6v fully charged, running a PAR 64 1000W GE 4556 landing light, a PHD-X1 voltage regulator had high settings of 28 and 30.5 volts.
It is quite an embarrassing story, as we have all read stories of liPo failures, and countered with luckily I know better than that, well in this instance my judgment was somewhat off.
The story starts eight weeks ago, I had just finished building the torch, I was so keen to use it that I did not build in an external emergency/storage power cut off, I intended to do this later, however I was called away to work early (internationally). I figured that the quiescent current of the torch would not run it flat in the eight or so weeks i would be gone, this was not the case, I returned a few days ago and found that the cell voltage of the lipos was 0.7v each. The batteries should have been disposed of at this point.
I removed the batteries, slowly balance charged and discharged them, they appeared to have maintained 80-90 percent of their capacity rating, and did not show signs of swelling.
I installed them in the torch and discharged them fairly rapidly, then inspected them, still no problem, I charged and discharged them like this twice, all was well.
The next night some friends came around for some drink's :party: (I'm 23 years old) by the time we were quite merry I grabbed the flashlight and put it on to charge, luckily I sat it next to me where I could see it, the drinks and stories continued, I then heard a fizz and looked down at my torch, DAMMN the lantern body has quite obviously expanded, the torch is quickly placed outside, at this point I will blame alcohol for affecting my judgement, I just left the torch and went to rejoin the party... a few minutes later I smelled burning plastic, luckily there was a fire blanket at hand, as fire was somewhat substantial.
The below photo is the remains of the torch shown above.
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