Re: Battery failures?
 

I was going to use S.W.A.T. as an example, but Woolly beat me to it. I will say that their system is really nice; it's simple & sturdy. I will also say that when I inspected them at GKC I had to look twice at the battery; if you only glance at them it looks like they've drilled into the case. :eek:

Re: Battery failures?
 

I believe we've been doing this for four years now. They are really handy and I like how they look :P

I'll edit this post and add a picture to it tomorrow night.

Re: Battery failures?
 

We have had two, new 2013-purchased MK batteries fail this year. Both times the batteries leaked acid from the vent area, and both times were in practice at our field.

This year we have our battery lying down under the robot, with a plug-type piece keeping it captive in place, holding it on the top. We think that the leaks occurred due to it being a tight fit, and taking a few hard hits during practice against other robots. This may have put enough pressure on the seals to break them enough to allow a small leak. We have since replaced the plug with one that is shorter and added more foam to each end to help absorb impact. Since then we have not had another failure.

Thankfully both times, the leak was small, found quickly, and any spill was cleaned up fast. Just in a very inconvenient location. :)

Re: Battery failures?
 

We haven't had any batteries fail this year. Usually though, they can fail due to multitudes of different reasons. Carrying the battery via the cable, dropping, or accidental shortage (my personal method of killing a battery one year).

Using the battery beak is one way to prevent issues. Usually a battery that is going to die shows signs ahead of time. But nothing trumps good battery safety and care.

Also, we've been using a pair of the triple bank battery chargers for two years now. Only issue is that someone blew out one of the banks, so we have 5 batteries charging instead of 6.

Re: Battery failures?
 

We have had 4 fail within the last year. 1 at champs last year overnight began leaking. We quickly got it contained and cleaned up the next morning when we found it.

During build season we were trying to fit a battery into the practice robot for locating the battery mount and it wouldn't fit, discovered that the battery had started to swell.

After that I bought a battery beak and we have been checking our batteries and pulling the ones that test fair out of service. We plan to use this to periodically check the batteries and track the data.

At QCR last weekend we lost 2 batteries that tested good but then immediately dropped voltage and now test bad. They were both older batteries, maybe 2010 competition season.

Re: Battery failures?
 

It turns out we are using the stock Andymark Pouches:
http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-0620.htm

Re: Battery failures?
 

Thanks for all of the replies guys.

Al/Ether - A second inspection of the robot shows a spot where there is a remote chance that the battery lead could be pushed pretty hard by a mechanism. I think this could have caused one of the leads to fracture. This will be cured with better wire control.

Steve - Our robot also has the battery mounted low and without much padding, plus we played a good bit of defense. This seems a likely cause for the leakage failure. We'll look into padding options.

Re: Battery failures?
 

We had a brand new battery fail at us at South Florida. Apparently one of the leads of a port on the 3 port battery charger had its polarity switched in manufacturing. The battery would show 3-6 Volts after we noticed it had died.:ahh:

Teams need to check, and re-check the batteries and chargers before they put them to use!

Re: Battery failures?
 

We had a battery from 2011 which died this year. Cause of death was most likely being left discharged over the summer.

Showed ~10.5 volts which collapsed to nothing under any load, the Shumaucher charger would remain in desulfation mode indefinitely, and after 12 hours on the charger it would read ~11.5 volts, but then drop .1 volts every 30 seconds until it stabilized around 10.5 volts again.

Keep the batteries charged to at least 12-12.3 volts at all times. If you just leave them in storage like we did, check them every month with a multimeter and make sure they're in a healthy range.