Broken Battery Question

[Deleted member 173459]

Would a possible burned down house, due to sticking with a bad battery, be a calculated risk that you are willing to take with your family over $150?

 

[christheswiss]

to DoomMeister....exactly!!
those contacts overheated and partially melted the plastic that is separating and properly tensioning the contacts!

 

[Robert Prior]

Personally I wouldn't risk it. Older-style batteries had exposed contacts, and accidentally shorting them caused fires.

If the terminals are always left/negative and right/positive (for example) then those contacts connecting could be shorting a cell. You could check that with a voltmeter if you wanted to.

In your shoes I'd be contacting DJI for a replacement battery.

 

[HeadShake]

Which is what @OJsakila's first response sure looked like, and you were understable in taking umbrage. You asked a simple question in an unoffensive way.

You shouldn't have responded in kind, however, again and again. While I hesitate to get involved, I have because I think you were very poorly treated. Which explains your hostile responses, while not justifying them.

Thanks for recognizing what is going on. Unfortunately reason doesn’t seem to apply here unfortunately. You were right, I really did attempt to be polite.

I’ve been flying drones commercially since they were available to the general public. As a matter of fact, I have a fleet of enterprise Drones. I came into this thread, not trying to sound like an know it all, and asking a question in a way that somebody could be proud of giving an answer. I only own this Mavic to because I was attempting to put some recreation back into my drone passion. I have owned seven different inspire1’s. If you own those drones, then you have to learn about batteries.

As it turns out, I finally found the pin out drawing. The drawing is great news. There is 0% chance of a short created. That is the technical and accurate situation. Now I will make my decision on how to proceed. So now I am done with this thread. A couple people have reached out, privately, not wanting to be involved in a discussion, such as what was created. I apologize to anybody who came to this thread, interested in some technical information. It turned into a Maury Povich show. Burning down the House……… pfffff. After technical considerations, no such risk exists. The rest is just drama.

 

[Droning on and on...]

It turned into a Maury Povich show.

Well said.

Burning down the House……… pfffff. After technical considerations, no such risk exists. The rest is just drama.

Gonna shake my finger at you now. This is a reasonable concern when one does not know the pinouts. No need to be dismissive.

In light of how you were treated like some sort of lobotomized ignoramus for asking, I understand you being a bit ticked.

Still... civility is achieved by grace and taking the high road.

Something I fail at far more often than I like

Back to the topic, don't assume just because those pins are not carrying voltage means there is no increased risk of catastrophe. The fact that the housing experienced damage in this way implies the possibility the battery experienced a hard physical hit, and there may be other damage internal and unseen. How likely? Not very, but then the potential problems don't justify using this battery, IMO.

 

[Anthony Ivory]

I read your initial question and immediately wondered why with a battery that has only had 6-cycles would you not be asking about the manufacturer's warranty and be thinking about that first and foremost.

Then I saw the good sound advice that many of our most experienced flyers offered and you do not seem to want it, is it because no one thinks your DIY "repair" is a smart and safe thing to do…

But don't let it bother you that neither degree is in electronics or anything else remotely related…

You want an educated reply, so here it is, I am very well educated with two advanced degrees and I say go for it, you might be the next "Edison" or "Tesla" and your battery may very well be able to send electricity out to the world without wires…

That is the best advice you will receive here and you can take that to the bank: the First Republic Bank, San Francisco, CA; or the Signature Bank, New York, NY; or the Silicon Valley Bank, Santa Clara, CA…

Never mind the fact that every one of these bank have gone belly-up in the last few months…

View attachment 163642

Put your money where your mouth is ! Are you going to pay for his drone WHEN not if it crashes?
If he can’t afford to get a free replacement battery how is he going to afford a new drone.

 

[HeadShake]

Put your money where your mouth is ! Are you going to pay for his drone WHEN not if it crashes?
If he can’t afford to get a free replacement battery how is he going to afford a new drone.

This was never about money. I’m just fine in that area. For me, it’s always the same, I need to understand.

Your point is well stated. Not one of these people have gotten under my skin at all. I’m not sure the office is this true.

 

[LoudThunder]

Put your money where your mouth is !

I do not know how you missed the point that trying to fix that battery was a "fool's errand…" How many LoLs and laughing emoji's does it take to let you know it was all a joke to try to fix it… As I wrote, I had no expertise in this and when I told him he could take it to the bank, I referenced all failed banks… and I even wrote that all those banks had gone belly up and to top it off, the graphic I included at the end was an electrical storm gone wild…

The OP wrote that the battery only had 6-cycles on it and did not say that it was long past its warranty period, so I quite honestly asked why it was not sent for warranty return…

For the battery to "break like it did, it was obviously defective and that might have only been the start of it failing catastrophically as other posters before me stated.

I've known folks who did not want to bother with a warranty return and tried to fix a problem themselves and when that failed, there was no longer any warranty coverage since the item was altered by a well-intended job gone badly…

And that is where my money is…

 

[Droning on and on...]

When you say you are going to DIY on a battery and invalidate any sort of warranty from the manufacturer, that pretty much equals NONSENSE to me. If you're some kind of legit educated with a degree engineer, then whatever. Just say so. Im just saying that to 99.9% of the consumer base whatever you are purposing to do with that battery is NONSENSE.

I'm a "legit" (huh?) educated with a degree (Electrical Engineering) engineer, and bring to the table lots of work with designing Li-Ion powerbanks. I'm now retired, still messing with the things for fun.

I probably know more people qualified to address these questions without formal training but long in tooth with experience messing with electronics... People whose knowledge and advice I'd trust far more than some green engineer fresh out of school.

Book knowledge is of limited value when stood up next to many years of actual experience.

 

[Droning on and on...]

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Dayam that's a big drone

 

[Droning on and on...]

I can offer some insight having recently replaced a 2-cell lipo battery pack in a controller. Pins 1-4 should be "live". Pins 5-8 should be "neutral", the remaining pins should be for battery balancing.

Since there's learnin' going on here, one little bit of clarification: Balancing during charging is handled internally by the BMS. The charging supply plays no part in balancing the cells in any DJI Intelligent Battery.

The pins you refer to for balancing are only there to make the individual cell voltages available for monitoring.

 

[LoudThunder]

I also have two advanced degrees, By the way, phi theta kappa in both degrees.

I showed this thread to a friend of mine, this guy is a doctor so a lot more educated than you. first, his eyes got big, then he looked at me and we both burst out laughing.

You know for a guy with two phi theta kappa corn (or is that corny? L o L…) degrees, you prove the point of such a remarkable achievement, "You are the smartest person you know…"

I originally asked why when the battery only had 6-cycles on it did you did not return it under warranty. Then I spent the rest of the posting of making a joke of trying to figure out why the battery is the way it is… Its "Defective," that means it is something that is imperfect in form, structure, or function. Which seems to explain all that you described.

Then the rest of my posting was all a joke, how many laughing emoji's and LoLs are needed to convince you that fiddling with this batter could result in it blowing up in your face, or blowing up in your drone, or while you are continuing to use it to fly and the whole drone comes crashing down in a blazing mess, endangering lives and property…

I told you that you could take my advice to the bank and I gave you three examples of how trustworthy my advice was with the references to three; not one, not two, but three failed banks and I even told you that so you might get the point that the advice was worthless…

And that was not even enough, I even included a graphical example of the possible use of continued use of that battery…

As for your doctor friend, who you bespeak of his intelligence, brings two things to mind, either he understood that it was all a joke and that is why he laughed…

Or his doctor status comes to mind and reminds me of a joke and you phi theta kappa's should enjoy this…

As you know, the medical student who graduates first in their class is call the Valedictorian…

But what do you call the medical student who graduates last in their class; you know, the one who has not yet learned the difference between Podiatrist and a Proctologist.

You call him, Doctor!

Show that to your Doctor friend…

So, I say if you go on with your phi theta kappa (smartest person you know…) attitude, you may become the Darwin Winner of 2023…

 

[DoomMeister]

This thread has gone completely off the rails and will be closed. The personal attacks are not what this forum is about.

For those interested the pinout for the battery can be found in this thread
Here are the pinouts of the Mavic Pro battery and shows that if the pins did contact each other it would not short the cells of the pack and cause a fire. The damage involved the outer 3 pins which are TXD, (-), and (-).

From the damage I see it does not look melted , but rather broken off like it was dropped or some dropped onto it. If it is still under warranty I would try to get it replaced for free.

My personal opinion is that I would only use this pack for ground operations or low level (<3 meter) tests, but that is just MY opinion.