Another total newb question - Hard case lipos
 

So when I started getting into brushless and better batteries, I went with Apogee Limn packs. I found a very cool find of someone taking a cordless drill and drilling right through a charged pack and no fire, no explosion. This to me was very cool and seemed safer than normal lipos so I have been using these.

Lately I have been seeing more and more hard case lipos popping up and I'm wondering if these are safer than regular lipos. Do the cases contain the fire if the battery lets go? Do the cases protect the packs from harder crashes then non-hard case lipos (provided the battery stays in the car, where it is supposed to)?

My question comes up because I am looking at getting an emaxx and I know I am going to go brushless with it at some point and the problem with Apogee packs is that there are limited versions of mah ratings and cell ratings. For example, the 5800mah pack only comes in 2 and 3 cell and the 3800 pack goes up to 6 cell. The other issue is they don't restock as fast when they run out so there is usually a couple month wait for certain packs.

Hard Case.
 

From the engineering view the hard case has two obvious advantages. First off yes it does give you better protection from crash damage, then a thin plastic heat shrink. 2nd is that it gives you an exacting size and presice look that some people really like for their particular project. Outside of that it is the same LiPo technology that the rest of them have.

I'd say it hides any potential problems that you'd be aware of early on. I don't know what a puffed cell in a hard case would do. I'm sure it does protect the battery against diaper rash if you have debris in your battery tray, and on the rare occasion of a direct hit with a blunt object straight to the battery. It might keep your pack warmer as well, which could be good or bad, not sure.

Have you seen any videos of a lipo being punctured intentionally or overcharged creating a huge ball of flames?

Have you seen any videos of a lipo erupting into flames that wasn't intentional?

ive heard of someone burning their esc which in turn took out the lipo and ended in disaster. ive also heard of some pilots crashing and burning. but very limited stories in cars.

I've seen the videos of intentionally forcing a lipo to explode but not of one going by accident.

A hard case could be bad too. If it does not have proper venting, the gases emitted have no escape. So you can imagine what would happen if it gets damaged somehow.

If a cell puffs up a bit you can see the case bulge as well, so it doesn't hide a bad cell.
I've seen one guy at racing accidentally leave his charger on nimh setting, then put a hard case orion pack on charge. When it puffed up a lot it just opened up the case, so it wasn't holding in any extra pressure. Luckily he saw the case split apart and took it off charge in time.
The case just protects from impacts and puncturing. I've seen a couple fall out cars while running on the track and they've been ok.

I'm debating between the enerland hard case lipos (5000 or 5100 mah) or the Enerland 6000mah regular lipos... I appreciate all the input. I want to make the best decision I can :)

I've sen one unintentional lipo fire at the track. It happened during the pre race practice at huge event at our local track so it happened right in front of everyone right in the middle of the track. A guy lawn darted his truggy and the pack wasn't held in a proper tray and it slid out of the straps and got punctured on the impact. I wasn't like a mushroom cloud. A bunch of smoke and some flames from under the body. He melted the body pretty good and a few parts on the truggy too.

Afterward I went over to the guy and asked him what happened. He said he didn't know. Then I asked him what lipo it was and he didn't know what brand, how many cells or how big it was. I asked him what motor he was running and he told me "the black ones, you know...."

It just pissed me off cuz that moron that knew nothing about what he was doing, let alone any basic safety made the brushless conversions look bad. Cant tell you how many "electric fireball" comments I got that day.

In my opinion the hard case doesn't really offer any better protection than a proper battery box would. I don't think the hard case is a bad idea, but the same basic safety precautions need to be used with or without a hard case.