I’m running a Laptop 13 (Intel 13th gen) and I’m experiencing an issue where the front of the chassis (by the mouse pad) buckles as the laptop gets warm. Generally, there’s no gap but as I use the machine and it warms up, the chassis buckles, making the touchpad unusable as clicks aren’t registered or there are phantom clicks as my palm presses down on the buckled area.
Any suggestions for resolution on this? It’s making it pretty unusable at this point.
What’s underneath when you open the laptop? Looks like either the top panel isn’t seated correctly or it’s pressing down on something.
Have to say though, I have the 2nd gen input panel and that area is also very slightly raised and I can close the gap by pressing onto it. It’s no where near as bad as yours mind. Maybe something to do with how the corner pops up to help remove it?
Have you checked your battery? Take the keyboard lid off, and visually inspect your battery. Is it swelling?
It’s possible. Any swelling is not too pronounced and as I don’t know what the battery typically looks like, it’s hard to tell for sure.
The image is just me holding it up. When it’s powered off for a few minutes and cooled down, the gap disappears. It starts showing up under use and gets worse over the period of an hour or so and then reaches a max of a few mm, which is enough to impact how the touchpad functions.
You can plan to say goodbye to your battery (order a replacement). Swollen 61Wh batteries with Framework is a thing.
That looks swollen to me - but double-check. I would suggest reaching out to Support, the battery may be replaced under warranty. If it is swollen, I would suggest removing it from the machine and disposing of it someplace that will take batteries, and informing them that it may be faulty. Those things can combust and are not pleasant to deal with.
This is 100% swollen. Please contact customer support immediately, and if possible discontinue using the laptop. You can actually remove the battery and use the laptop without out it using the AC. You would need to enter the BIOS and enable standalone mode though. Do that before unplugging and removing the battery.
That is a spicy pillow. Time to replace.
Yours is definitely swollen. If it’s visibly swollen then it’s without a doubt time to get it replaced and to contact customer support if there is other issues that affected the battery to swell as well.
Just for reference, this is what a battery should look like:
Ugh no battery stock.
Thanks for the reference image. I’ve powered it down and will figure out what to do until batteries come back into stock.
Yeah, that’s a rather common issue with the batteries’ availability.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll do that to transfer off stuff and dig out an old machine in the interim for travel purposes.
Reach out to support. I have noticed that sometimes they have back stock for issues like this.
Batteries not showing in stock is different from what support has access to. Especially with this known issue of these batteries swelling.
Not saying it is the case here but leaving it (or any lithium battery) charged at 100% all the time is bad for it. Consider limiting the charge to 80% in the bios. The different in battery life is quite small and future batteries will have longer lives.
Remove the battery and use it plugged in, should work unless they’ve done something to prevent it. At least allows you to use it till support solves the issue.
