How Soft Is Soft Case
 

Having never seen one, how soft are soft cased Lipo's?

Do they literally squash in your hands etc? What leaks/blows if anything if you drop them?

I had a maxamps one, they are just basically heatshrinked, they are solid... if you drop them you could damage the heatshrink... :woot: Nothing will leak or blow...

I've seen some soft cased flight and micro lipo's. the cells themselves have quite a soft alluminium casing, and there is a layer of thin heatshrink around them.

you could definitely alter the shape of them if you push them hard enough against a desk or something.

not sure what happens if you puncture them though!

so long as you double heatshrink them they are fine i run them all the time in my 1/8th truggy and buggy ;)

all li-po's are layers of a malliable plastic vaccuum packed in a aluminium pouch. Soft case cells are just the raw cells in heatshrink. This is normally what you get for flight packs. they're fine to handle but can be deformed by impacts- eith dropped or hit. Once deformed they can be damaged leading to best case- puffing up and losing performance, worst case toxic fire.

If the cells get puctured by something conductive like a scre or carbon, you're almost gaurenteed a fire.

Hard cased cells are the same cells in a tougher plastic case instead of heatshrink to make them more robust and resistand to impacts. This is a bigger priority in TC when cells can be hit in accidents, by other cars, or come loose from the chassis. Off road cars tend to offer a little more protection but I think hard cased are still mandatory for any BRCA events and some clubs.

well all i can say is that the rc flight guys the ones who truely understand lipo all use soft case cells and they have been ffor years now i would say in a crash the cellls take allot more stress in a plane i have only saw one cell get dammaged i run a rc helicopter and i also have never had a cell go bad and i have also had some good crashes. so all in all to me soft case is a good money saver

Well, as an RC flight guy, I can say that during normal flight soft cased cells have a pretty easy time of it. But in a crash landing it's a different story and I've personally seen two internally damaged and puffed up and one blow out/fire. But in a light crash they're almost always fine.

In a car, like a TC that's hitting the boards or being t-boned down the straight, or an off road car that's jumping and landing several times a lap or crashing off jumps soft cases can be quite a risk, which is why the BRCA and most clubs don't allow them.

If you personally are just bashing or are happy to take the risk it's up to you.

HTH,
Chris.

well i gues its down to the person running it i personaly had a boom strike on my helli last week droped maybe 150 feet straight down the battery is fine maybe i was lucky. i personaly dont do lipo in my car as i feal it moves the balance so much you end up adding way to much lead for it to be worth it

Lipo is great in cars, easy life now for us with our lipo powered buggys, of course for all BRCA events they must be off the approved list. All approved lipos are hard cased. I would imagine lipos being used at the Proline Dirt Arena would be expected to be hard case type. We can add weight where we want it with lipos which is helpful and charge quickly enough between heats to manage on one battery.

i have not tryed raceing lipo at the track and i dont think i will not for a while yet i run a hard case in my tc and yes it is the way forward but the cars need to catch up

seen a few soft cased flight packs damaged in crashes, bloated ones, even punctured but only know of one catching fire on anything other than overcharging. i know this i a bit silly but i did try to ignite a failing flight pack. i gave it a few good hits with a hammer, no effect, shorted it out and it puffed slightly, recharged it for a bit then put a screw through one cell, shot it with an air rifle, no effect. nimh charger at 7A for about 40 mins had it spitting and frothing eventually. i do know of someone however who merely dropped a pack onto tarmac, after 10 mins it was puffed, after 20 it had combusted. i think the toughness of the cells must vary greatly on construction and type, mine was an older 10c pack, his was a newer 25c, more volatile chemistry??