PSA: 61Wh battery pillowed 1y 3mo from purchase

Hi all,

Just a quick PSA to check your battery. I ordered a 61Wh in June 2023, and today my input cover was bulging so I checked under and it’s very swollen. I’m probably out of warranty so have to eat a replacement, but you may not be!

Interestingly, I had my Batch 6 55Wh battery from December 2021 to June 2023 (and a little longer because I waited for the 11th gen firmware update to drop before replacing the bat), so this one actually lasted half the daily use of my original (which never puffed).


Also, I wanted to post this in the laptop 13 discussion, but no combination of tags would let me post there. /shrug

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How many cycles does it have?

We have noticed that behavior with batteries of our RC planes.
After a longer analysis, we identified charge level and exposed temperature to be the culprit.
In short, if you charge your batter in house at 25⁰C to 100%, and go out and leave it in your car where the temperature drops a lot, the “excess” power has to go somewhere because the cell chemistry changes with temperature.
The excess power, because depending on the temperature, the battery can hold more (hot) or less (cold) charge. The Temperature has an essential impact on the internal resistance of the batter pack.
What I do when on the move in Winter, is to charge the battery max 90%. In summer I tend to go to 100%. That’ll do.

There are also many explanations on the net. How to read battery discharge curves - Battery Power Tips also shows the battery temperature curves.

I had written down all what I learned regarding the batteries (out of long RC forum discussions) here: RC Batteries FAQ if you’re interested. Because what is written on the battery is very often not reality.

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126, half that of my 51wh iirc. 86% capacity

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86% after just 126 cycles?!

What was you usage pattern?

Different battery chemistry (you’re likely flying lipo vs laptop’s li-ion), which means they react differently to conditions. In any event, I treat my laptop pretty well and it only ever gets used or left to sit in room temperature.

I also set it to 60% limit in bios when I know I’ll be using it docked for an extended period, but I put it back to 100% when (like now) I know I need to take it and have a work day of battery life.

I’m sure you know that the capacity report is pretty inaccurate unless taken in specific conditions (which I no longer feel safe to set up), so that’s what was on my tlp report at 99% charge after booting up.

Usage pattern varies between leaving it at a limit of 60% and plugged in and a limit of 100% and using the full battery over 8h before charging overnight.

This is probably one of the first 61Wh bats framework made given that I preordered the day of their early (erroneous) announcement and preorder open, so maybe it was a bad batch.

If you do full discharge charge cycles somewhat regularly it should be reasonably close.

Hell for science it would be worth doing one just to find out how much capacity is actually left now.

That could be an explanation, I suppose we’ll see a bunch more reports soon if this is a widespread issue.

Battery is puffed, I’m not charging it for science because I don’t want my mainboard to look like a science experiment.

Actually, it already does look like a science experiment gone weird :smiley:

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Your call, just being puffed doesn’t make a battery particularly dangerous to charge and it would be interesting.

Mechanical damage on the other hand is a whole other story XD.

Mine is slightly worse.
Received Feb 2022 Batch 8
90% of the time plugged in at 78% max charge via bios.
I used to reset by discharge and recharge once a month, all was fine then it shot up to 12% with 106 cycles ???

Yours isn’t puffed though XD

Not that I can tell, keyboard is flat :slight_smile: Not going to look inside. maybe the 78% saves me from a 100% charge in 32° day temp to 6° night temp in the winters.

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Gets one of the easiest to open laptops, refuses to look inside.

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Why mess with what’s working ?

I didn’t refuse as I wasn’t asked and who is rude enough to ask me to do the unnecessary.

Opened it once to change the input cover, why are you being so rude, personal and off topic?

:sob:

I have a 61wh battery in a project of mine, and swelling is a real concern, which is actually quiet common in general. However, I limit the charge capacity to 60% because I don’t want to exacerbate swelling.

The change of temperature affecting swelling really makes a lot of sense. This stuff doesn’t just apply to Framework batteries, but batteries in general.

Still really unfortunate Be_Far. I wonder what your ambient temperature is normally?

I am sorry you perceived my little joke as rude, it was not meant that way.

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I live in Texas, so pretty sweaty outside, but I’ve never used it nor left it in that weather/in a hot car etc. room temp at 68-70 degrees?

I’m out of the country right now (which means I have to order a battery rather than swapping back to the 51 ugh), but temps are very mild here at the moment so I have no idea what brought this on.

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Most of my science experiments end with the smell of burning plastic and a ring of soot that won’t come out of the driveway for a few rainstorms… I need this laptop for school haha