Have You Ever Accidentally Shorted a Battery ?

[Sacman]

Threw my keys into my rear paniers where there was partially exposed battery connections.
Sparks shot out and blew a hole in the paniers.
When I retrieved my keys I found 2 of them were arch-welded to each other.

[Ypedal]

Damn.. 56 to 4 to far !!!...

[rojitor]

Once i almost weld the andersons when plugging, i turned it off and everything went ok again, i had to replace the connectors though.

[tedcs]

Damn.. 56 to 4 to far !!!...

If the number of events were considered, I could push the ratio higher than 14:1!

BTW: Steel reinforcing bars can be used if jumper cables are unavailable.

[Doctorbass]

For those who might doubt about the dewalt 36V pack.. give a try... you'll see!

These damn BMS have their case connected to the negative of the battery.. and when you unsolder them.. you better disconnect the NEG first!!!.. otherwise when desoldering the positive tab, the risk of shorting the positive to the BMS case is really high!

The blast was impressive and the firework that produced felt on some paper on mt table and they caught fire! fortunately i had time to react!

I also shorted my two 14s4p A123 together ( i reversed one of the parallel connections ... This is impressive how fast a SB50 connector can dissapear... vaporize!

Any KFC sponsor here?

Doc

[lostrack]

My granddad was an electrician who was working on overhead live lines. He checked with his partner to see if the power was off, which the dude said it was, so he climbed up there and started working... He took a 30,000 volt shock and flew to the ground...and survived!
This man was winding his own TV sets with copper wire around a cathode ray tube before tv was being broadcast! If he was still around I'd be building an EV with him

[e-bike-is-fun]

Yea that's good.
I drove a boom lift w/two men into lines on a cage.
Men survived (pussy's) but shut down half the town.

[blake.thomas.80486]

I dropped a wrench across a car battery once, it stuck and burned a chunk out of it and the terminal, thankfully lead acids are tuf and it didn't seem to harm it.
I took 20Kv or so from hand to hand (high voltage supply failed and arced) I felt my chest thump, it rather scared me.

[Ykick]

My dad told me about being in the Phillipines when a volcano erupted - the iron dust spewing into the immediate area shorted car batteries and created dramatic sparks and mini explosions. Power lines and transformers too!

[Doctorbass]

Whe3n i was in car audio hobby ( SPL contest) We had a VW gold with 8 parallel optima yellow top Group 31 12V battery with aluminum bus bar. A frind of mine droped a wrench and... yes it have fall directly on those

12V is not so high for arcing.. but still impressive when you have alot of amps ( 10 000+A) it's dangerous!

One of the aluminum bus bar ( 1" x 1/4") melted and fall on the car carped wich melted too

Doc

[mdd0127]

I did the same thing! We built an Isuzu pickup with six Cerwin Vega Stroker 12's and six custom, one off linear power 2500 watt monoblock amps. I can't remember how many yellow tops we had in there but we used 1" X 1" aluminum bar for the buss bars and after tightening the last battery, the wrench slipped out of my hand. It instantly vaporized in the middle and I swatted the molten metal off of the top of the battery before it did any damage. We had to bolt a chunk of 2" x 4" solid aluminum from between the seats to the top middle of the windshield frame to keep the 3/4" lexan windshield from blowing it's rivets out! That truck was hitting 174.9db......in 1996!

The most recent battery short was while demonstrating the coolness of my lipo parallel blocks to someone. As I was saying, "I designed these so that the batteries can only be plugged in correctly.", I touched the lipo bullets to the parallel block in reverse polarity causing a giant spark and the instantaneous vaporization of the two 75A castle bullets that connected the pack to the controller. My ego has a scar from that one...didn't burn my fingers though! While it was impossible to actually plug the battery packs in backwards, it sure wasn't impossible to touch the terminals together!

[Ypedal]

Heh Heh.... i hates bullets.....

Andersons all the way. ( no matter how many people try to convince me otherwise )

[Doctorbass]

I did the same thing! We built an Isuzu pickup with six Cerwin Vega Stroker 12's and six custom, one off linear power 2500 watt monoblock amps. I can't remember how many yellow tops we had in there but we used 1" X 1" aluminum bar for the buss bars and after tightening the last battery, the wrench slipped out of my hand. It instantly vaporized in the middle and I swatted the molten metal off of the top of the battery before it did any damage. We had to bolt a chunk of 2" x 4" solid aluminum from between the seats to the top middle of the windshield frame to keep the 3/4" lexan windshield from blowing it's rivets out! That truck was hitting 174.9db......in 1996!

The most recent battery short was while demonstrating the coolness of my lipo parallel blocks to someone. As I was saying, "I designed these so that the batteries can only be plugged in correctly.", I touched the lipo bullets to the parallel block in reverse polarity causing a giant spark and the instantaneous vaporization of the two 75A castle bullets that connected the pack to the controller. My ego has a scar from that one...didn't burn my fingers though! While it was impossible to actually plug the battery packs in backwards, it sure wasn't impossible to touch the terminals together!

Are you sure of your 174.9dB score you mentionned?.. because the loudest SPL that waas made in 1998 it was John Henry with the 12x 12inch woofer and the Mmats amp that had 174.7dB back in 1998.... i think no one ever beated that score BEFORE 98 ?

Doc

[Ypedal]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFd-OeMu3E4

[el_walto]

I once shorted a 48V 15Ah ping battery. Melted the fuse AND the fuse holder and made a very bright flash of light.

[mdd0127]

I did the same thing! We built an Isuzu pickup with six Cerwin Vega Stroker 12's and six custom, one off linear power 2500 watt monoblock amps. I can't remember how many yellow tops we had in there but we used 1" X 1" aluminum bar for the buss bars and after tightening the last battery, the wrench slipped out of my hand. It instantly vaporized in the middle and I swatted the molten metal off of the top of the battery before it did any damage. We had to bolt a chunk of 2" x 4" solid aluminum from between the seats to the top middle of the windshield frame to keep the 3/4" lexan windshield from blowing it's rivets out! That truck was hitting 174.9db......in 1996!

The most recent battery short was while demonstrating the coolness of my lipo parallel blocks to someone. As I was saying, "I designed these so that the batteries can only be plugged in correctly.", I touched the lipo bullets to the parallel block in reverse polarity causing a giant spark and the instantaneous vaporization of the two 75A castle bullets that connected the pack to the controller. My ego has a scar from that one...didn't burn my fingers though! While it was impossible to actually plug the battery packs in backwards, it sure wasn't impossible to touch the terminals together!

Are you sure of your 174.9dB score you mentionned?.. because the loudest SPL that waas made in 1998 it was John Henry with the 12x 12inch woofer and the Mmats amp that had 174.7dB back in 1998.... i think no one ever beated that score BEFORE 98 ?

Doc

I made a typo. It was stroker 15's. I saw it hit that a few times in the shop while we were tuning it for the 96, maybe 97 USACi in Kansas City. It took us forever to find a meter setup that would read over 160. We had to rent it from an industrial company. At first, we had no idea what it was going to do and we couldn't find the remote for it so I put on extensive ear protection and sat in the truck once for a burp. I got knocked unconscious and was bleeding out of both nostrils. My eyes were full of blood for a month. I think that for some unknown reason, the truck never made it to competition though. I moved shortly after I worked on it and quit following car audio for a few years. Haven't seen or heard from it since. I've searched the internet for pics and have seen references to an isuzu pu with strokers hitting the mid 160's in competition but can't confirm it's the same one because there aren't any pics posted. Due to the small cab space, the truck was loudest with a 180 hz burp but they always ran low digital bass cd's in the comps back then so it could be the same truck. I also built/helped build quite a few insane db systems that were strictly for the pleasure of the owner and never did competitions too. All those amps turning that wrench to vapor was really awesome though!

[mdd0127]

Heh Heh.... i hates bullets.....

Andersons all the way. ( no matter how many people try to convince me otherwise )

The 75A bullets actually acted like a 150A fuse! I'm glad they melted! Running Andersens on anything powerful is just asking for problems. They barely handle their rated current and don't make good enough connections IMHO.

[Ypedal]

Andersons come in all sizes... if you need bigger.. get bigger andersons..

I run PP45's on almost all my stuff up to 50 amps, when crimped properly they work perfectly, only time i've melted a pair ( only happend once, on 100's i've used ) using cheap car audio speaker cable stuffed in a backpack running 100 amps...

my RC bike has PP45 andersons between the motor and controller, 48v 100 amps and show no sign of problems after 3 years of use.

ymmv..

Yes, i've tried bullets on a few builds, after messing with them for a couple weeks i took them off after making sparks ( shielded bullets.. still managed to get sparks.. )

[miuan]

Yes, i've tried bullets on a few builds, after messing with them for a couple weeks i took them off after making sparks ( shielded bullets.. still managed to get sparks.. )

just curious, how do you make sparks using these?
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor ... _set_.html
i mean, how can you make a spark, other than plugging your charger into your bike, or one battery into another?

[Ypedal]

those, not so bad..


These however :
http://ypedal.com/Cyclone/cyclone4.htm

[miuan]

Gosh! A mere hour after posting the previous question, I managed to make them spark
BUT, it was not because of the plugs, It was because of faulty wiring done by me... where ANY plug would spark.
They did not vaporize this time (the wire was thin enough) and still keep on going!
I dig the 4mm bullets.

[chuckufarley]

It all happened when I was at U.T.I. (Universal Technical Institute)...... a LONG time ago.....One of my fellow students had removed the positive battery terminal from the starter on one of the student learning cars .... he hung it over the front of the car.....leaned over against it.....AND he melted the zipper on his pants.. while wearing them.....

[Doctorbass]

Heh Heh.... i hates bullets.....

Andersons all the way. ( no matter how many people try to convince me otherwise )

The 75A bullets actually acted like a 150A fuse! I'm glad they melted! Running Andersens on anything powerful is just asking for problems. They barely handle their rated current and don't make good enough connections IMHO.

I run ONLY Anderson connectors. These have LONG great history in the in last decades in the industry.

I’m using PP30 connector for the motor phase ( that I recal are having 300A burst and 80A continuous on my E-Giant setup)

I need 11kW continuous in my X5 to hold 113km/h and never had any problem with the PP30 on the phase wires.

For the battery the SB50 are my preferred one if you use the proper wire size, they will work really well and can hold 100A continuous with the use of 6AWG cables no prob!.. I installed them for my 0-10V 0-100A psu.

Most of the TTXGP guys are using SB175 connectors, The Killacycle is using the SB350 connector that are rated 350A.. but they burst 2000A during 5 sec… and never had any issue with those

So my comment about those: THEY ARE REALLY STRONG! And.. you can connect any of these connector together.. and not have any pain due to Male or Female type complications!!

The reason why Luke had vaporized them is due to the kiloamp burst and arcing!.. It,s not like a connector that is already connected and that you burst high current thru it...

Arcing can damage any connector with current under their rated max amp.

Reversing polarity does create arcing and also 10 or 100 times more current...

The bullet connector might in some case have a lower miliohms than the same anderson category connector.. but they are subject male female problematic...


Doc

[dilbertjth]

Just shorted mine yesterday, the day it arrived. 15Ah 48V lifepo4 pack. I was trying to be cautious and take a reading
of the voltage of the XLR connector to make sure the polarity was correct. I was careful not to touch the leads to more
than one pin, or to each other, but neglected to think about the connector housing itself, which is also metal. So I let
them both touch that and POOF! What a bonehead thing to do. Then I immediately re-measured the voltage at the
other connector, an SB50 (much easier) to see if any damage was done and it was a flat zero. Was I pissed at myself!
Then a minute or two later I tried again (not sure why), and it was back to 54V! So I guess the BMS just keeps it shut
off for a period time before reactivating it. So apparently no major damage done. It did melt a couple of small notches
on the connector housing, but the connector is still functional.

[hillzofvalp]

I was home for christmas in my basement with my 14s5p a123 pack and I thought it would be fun to try just tapping the leads together. Loud poof beneath sleeping family. Still need to buy a fire extinguisher.