After seeing a few recent e-boards catching fire, I would like to invite all of you to a dedicated and and an essential topic to our hobby. Discussing a must taken steps ensuring a safe to use e-board and sharing your personal experiences and tips .
The very first question I would like to ask: Is loop key a must? Personally I have a push to start switch installed, wich switches the current to the ESC and also has a 100a fuse.
A discussion I would like to make: my battery pack is heat shrink wrapped with a soft bathroom style untislip map on one side, facing the bottom of the board. I have been noticing bruisings from the P group balance connectors and wanted to protect them. With the idea if the thing catches fire, mat or no mat, it will still burn dead.
if your board catches fire while discharging youre sure to realize it and can deal with it and I think its the charging thatās the most dangerous and regardless of what board or battery used (except maybe lithium iron!) people should be around when charging.
There is 1000 details about how to make a non fire starter battery. And like 0 ideas on how to put out a battery fire. They burn like box of fireworks.
Vibration and lack of thought out insulation is the number 1 fire starter for 18650 packs. Vibration is way worse than you think. Every part of your build turns into an orbital sander. I have had capacitors wear through the aluminum casing just resting on soft plastic.
Just use the search function for topics on āmy board caught fireā to crowdsource ideas for safer batteries.
Ok there are a few ideas. But not that many effective ones. Itās containment at best. Or lowering the temperature which is not easy. I even created a topic on how to put out a battery fire. Not very satisfying solutions.
Back on topic. We can start a best battery practice thread here if thatās what you wanted. Yes I think a loop key is an extra safety feature if you can pull it out in the event the board starts to smoke. It might or might not stop your issue but itās one more tool for the battle. It could also help in a controller issue if you have a in expected full throttle event. My loop key is reachable while Iām ridding the board for this reason.
As min in my case i could stop the fire fast enough to donāt burn down my house with the things I linked.
Whatās not satisfying in it?
And what else you want to make?
If it happens outside, just run.
If it happens inside, get your blankets and fire extinguishing tools and drop it over.
I think there just way much more ways to prevent a fire to happen, than to switch it off when itās started. Thatās probably also the reason why more threads about preventing it.
Iām always happy to get some more input with how to stop a fire.
Could you please link me your thread.
Iām currently in the process of redesigning my enclosure and the component layout. Also going to be upgrading the batteries from LiPo to Li-Ion.
My plan is to wrap the battery in a fire retardant material. The BMS will be separate and will be wrapped in heat shrink to ensure nothing makes contact.
Honestly I think this is about a much as you can do. The other thing you can do is separating your battery/BMS and your controls like the Boosted board does. While theirs is more so the board can still flex, itās actually a really good idea to keep the components separated. If the batteries catch on fire, the other is āsafeā.
With the things linked in here:
