Slightly damaged lipo... should I keep it?

[IceFireSoul]

Hello all,

Crashed my P3P last week in a cave badly - fell from 15 meters up (I have the footage)...

The battery obviously fell off the drone at one point. All the damage it has is one pointed dot on the grey lining - like a hit with a nail - but it's not too deep/big; and there is no puffing at all. Obviously has hit a rock along the fall.

When measured it shows perfect. Should I keep it?

 

[sharper4]

I might fly it low and slow from full to empty before I trusted it.

 

[Khador]

Personally I'd ebay it, sell it as is (be honest about the damage) and buy a new one. Let someone else take the risk. $100 vs $1000 is a no brainer for me.

If you decide to keep it I'd make sure to take extra care charging it. Monitor it for puffing and make sure you test it with a low and slow series of flights to see if there is any sudden drop of in capacity / voltage in flight.

 

[silverstoned83]

A picture would help a lot.

The truth is that no one can really know for sure whether it will work good as new forever or not. Is that a risk you are willing to take? A damaged LiPo should be treated with caution. It may appear to be fine, but it may also be just a matter of time before the inevitable happens.

Having said that, I have continued use of crashed LiPo's with success that even 'taco'd' slightly and banged up one corner. This was on my TBS Discovery... I took all necessary precautions while storing it in my home, including storing it in a location that would contain a potential fire.

I also have a Goblin RC heli which I chose to not take the risk with simply due to the stored energy within the blades in the event of a crash. If our 9" props can give you a significant cut, imagine what 500-700mm blades can do if it were to fall out of the sky.

 

[bobmyers]

Hello all,

Crashed my P3P last week in a cave badly - fell from 15 meters up (I have the footage)...

The battery obviously fell off the drone at one point. All the damage it has is one pointed dot on the grey lining - like a hit with a nail - but it's not too deep/big; and there is no puffing at all. Obviously has hit a rock along the fall.

When measured it shows perfect. Should I keep it?

If you chose to keep it-- put some tape over the indention-- as large a piece as you can put on without getting outside the cardboard cover. This will give you some added protection in prohibiting oxygen from in interacting with the lithium polymer in the event of leakage. With no oxyen, there will be no fire, as soon as the cell is exposed to air, the LP will ignite into open flame.
Fly it very close for a couple of cycles and monitor the heat very closely. If it does not over heat, the cell is probably not damaged. internal heating is a result of chemical reactions within the cell.

 

[Mako79]

Donate to science. Someone needs to autopsy the P3 Batts.
I want to see what the battery configuration is. Is the P3 battery truly a 4S????

In the P2 5200 3S Batteries, DJI decided to use 6 batteries running 3 in parallel.
What does this mean? Hypothetically, it doesn't balance correctly when charging, and therefore may report to be fine because the parallel setup "lies" until a massive voltage drop occurs because 1 of the 2 batteries fail.

 

[bobmyers]

Donate to science. Someone needs to autopsy the P3 Batts.
I want to see what the battery configuration is. Is the P3 battery truly a 4S????

In the P2 5200 3S Batteries, DJI decided to use 6 batteries running 3 in parallel.
What does this mean? Hypothetically, it doesn't balance correctly when charging, and therefore may report to be fine because the parallel setup "lies" until a massive voltage drop occurs because 1 of the 2 batteries fail.

R&D is expensive