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