NiMH Pack Protection?

[BrianG]

I was assembling a side-by-side 14 cell pack tonight (2 rows of 7 cells) and just happened to notice how thin the plastic coating on NiMH cells are. Every once in a while you see/hear of a cell exploding for whatever reason and it got me thinking. Maybe during the course of jumping and going over rough terrain the casing where two cells meet gets worn down enough to short the two cells? The result is too burned up to actually see the cause, so who knows? So, I thought a little extra protection would be in order.

I took some standard thickness letter size paper, folded it in half, cut strips the length and width of a sub-C cell, and stuck one between each cell. This adds about 0.2mm (the thickness of doubled-up paper) of extra insulation between each cell but is not enough to increase the length of a pack by any appreciable amount.

Any thoughts?