I've had my Phantom 4 for 2 1/2 years. Low flight hours and never crashed. I was charging my batteries today for flying tomorrow. I noticed this crack on both of my batteries at the same location. Any thoughts?
Crack in battery case
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msinger
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I have cracks in that same location on a few of my P4 batteries. I opened up a defective battery a few months ago and found the crack was caused by pressure from this spring:
Thanks for figuring that out. Two of my four P4 batteries have those cracks too, and both have been in use for 3 years. The springs causing the cracks are for the latches that lock the battery into the aircraft. Failure of that assembly could cause a battery to fall out in flight.
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Agreed. I don't think small cracks like shown in the photos above will cause the latch to fail. However, it's certainly something to keep an eye on.
If anyone has a battery like this that is less than 6 months old, contact DJI Support to get it replaced under warranty. For batteries older than 6 months (which are out of warranty), it might still be worth contacting DJI Support to see if they will cover it under warranty. I suspect they won't, but I haven't seen anyone mention they tried and got denied.
I have a theory about these cracks. I store my Phantom 4 in the original styrofoam case it came in along with all the accessories including the batteries. When the fully charged batteries go through their discharge in the styrofoam case it is tight and insulated and the heat has no where to go. I wonder if this is causing the cracks in the face of the battery. Just a theory...
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Perhaps? However, I have cracked batteries that were never tightly stored in an insulated case.
Yea I have 2 of my 4 batteries with a crack, under the spring pushing on the case from the inside and pressing to hard on the tabs only makes it worse, so easy pressure when you take them out. I put Locktite 414 glue on a few cracks on my P4 and batteries and the cracks never came back! Tried a few types of Locktite and the 414 works great, some cracks have probably over 100 flights and are still holding with that glue.
I have two batteries that’s been stored in the original Styrofoam case too and they are cracked. The face of one just has a small crack and the other is busted completely through. Does anybody know how I can repair them?
I did some googling, hoping to find replacement tops for the P4 batteries. I found several sellers on Alibaba offering complete replacement battery enclosures. But nobody offers just the tops. The whole enclosures were not expensive, but the shipping is by slow boat from China, taking 6-8 weeks, and you have to pay shipping. There are cases with improved spring design that spreads the pressure over a wider area, making it less likely to cause a crack. Some batteries have two screws holding the top on, and others have the top is glued on, or with molded in latches tacked with glue. I'm going to remove a screwed on top and see if I can reinforce it with glue and a piece of stiff plastic or metal under the spring. One of my caps is cracked all the way across, from edge to edge, and I'm worried it could fail and let the battery fall out in flight.
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