why did my palm tx's battery start on fire

[BAB2000]

I was changing the battery on my palm tx and it burst into flames. It melted the back cover. Why did it do this. I followed the instructions on how to do it.

What instructions?

It would seem the battery was physically damaged to have caused the internal chemical reaction to cause this to occur.

If the incorrect input charge voltage was applied, the cells can be damaged, but never heard of the type used in the Palm units, and majority of cell phones have this chemical break down under normal use. Only if tampered with.

The only time I saw a cell flame, was a m500 battery that was replaced, a charge volt of 5 VDC 2 A was applied, and the cell was struck with a hammer, three times, then the cell set on the charger for about 10 minutes before flame were present, no smoke, just flames.

Your experience is a first as far as am aware, most will swell to a third larger, but not flames with out physical damage.

Can you provide photos?

[Gregte]

The thing is, with the TX as well as many other Palms, the battery is glued onto the back case half. To properly remove it you have to be very careful prying the battery from the case half. It is easily possible to damage the battery physically if too much force is applied too rapidly.

[AKAJohnDoe]

While I realize that it is possible for a user to perform this action, the battery in the Palm TX is not designated as user-replaceable.

[Dngrsone]

I gotta wonder if maybe the soldering iron had anything to do with it; considering one would be required to remove and replace said battery.

[jayman20086]

I can't provide videos or pictures because nothing is left of the battery. The back case melted. I didn't solder anything when removing. i knew it was glued to I pryed the tape up and worked a mini screw driver all the way around slowly. I am guessing the back stayed with the battery. The battery was shoot. I thought I would save a litlle money by doing a simple job myself, but I guess I was wrong. I am only going to losely tape the new battery. I am waiting for a new back case to come. It was normal operation, no wrong charging or short by my part. Prying with a 10mm wide screwdriver shouldn't put a hole that would "short" the battery. I thought those batteries had safety precuations to keep this from happening. I think this was a defective battery, but I doubt the manufacturer will believe me.

[Konrad Pierce]

Localized heat could explode a battery. I'm still amazed that it would actually just burst into flames ... there's some nasty goop in there, but nothing volatile enough to self-ignite. There must have been a spark - that's why I suspected the unit was still plugged in.

[Gregte]

... Prying with a 10mm wide screwdriver shouldn't put a hole that would "short" the battery. I thought those batteries had safety precuations to keep this from happening....

The built in circuit breaker is to protect against shorting the output terminals of the battery. If the battery gets physically damage it can short internally, prior to the breaker. There is no way to protect against that other than to put the battery in a thick and strong casing.

A recent laptop recall of Sony batteries was due to some batteries being made with loose metal particles inside that could cause an internal short, generate heat, and start a fire. Therefore it would seem conceivable that damaging the battery could produce something similar.

Also, the charger that comes with the TX cannot put out near as much power as the battery itself. The battery could produce enough heat not being recharged to start the fire.

[shawnlux]

The only time we have observed this is when the battery is punctured. Then it makes pretty flames unless it is still attached to the device. Fire damage is very hard to repair on a PCB.

[Konrad Pierce]

I've found you can't even salvage components from a burnt board, whether the damage is caused by heat or electrical burning. Sometimes such components might look fine, but they seem to have a very high failure rate and I consider them automatically suspect. I just throw such boards away - can't even pull off a physical connector because you'll never know how long it may last.

[osxdude]

Whoops. My battery is bent.

How do you get the battery out of the posotion it was in? I am needing to re-soder the BT radio and I don't want my TX to break.