[dash8]

What are peoples thoughts in discharging Lipos? Some say hell yes, others hell no...

I never have discharged, but am wondering what everyone else is doing?

[cervelott]

I understand that you want to discharge to 1/2 their charge if storing for over a week's time. Can anyone else elaborate?
(Also read that discharging lipos can be dangerous and you will kill a lipo battery if not done right and you get to too low a voltage.)

[dash8]

Originally Posted by cervelott

I understand that you want to discharge to 1/2 their charge if storing for over a week's time. Can anyone else elaborate?
(Also read that discharging lipos can be dangerous and you will kill a lipo battery if not done right and you get to too low a voltage.)

Read that discharging too much is not dangerous, but it will kill the battery, OVERcharging will make it explode?

[Cougar429]

If you are looking to discharge Lipos with the intent of discarding them, the best way is too drop the pack(s) into a pail of salt water for a few days. This will completely neutralize them.

Yes, overdischarging causes an irreversible chemical change in the cells, so once is enough to seriously degrade or kill the pack.

You also want to be very carefull with packs that have physical damage, such as bent cells or damaged ends from a boink. The pos and neg conductors are separated by very thin barriers and it takes little to short them out, creating the 'Rapid Critical Disassembly" aka "BANG" or the more common, "Oh SH!T, FIRE". The energy density of these batteries, (the amount of power stuffed into them that can feed the two aforementioned events), has been compared to a clip loaded with 38 ammo, so should be taken seriously.

[Spitball]

Li-Pos should really be discharged/charged to half their capacity, about 3,7 volts per cell for storage beyond a couple of weeks. then charging fully again, preferably with balancing (see another post), before use. But you never need to discharge Li-pos otherwise - they do not need reforming like NiCd cells and you are only using up useful life cycles in the pack.

[VA6WGO]

No need to get the cells below 3.7V. If the battery is rated for 1000mah, charge it up and then discharge 500 mah out of the battery for storage.

These batteries don't create memory, there is no need of a full discharge and a full charge, unless you are doing it to monitor the capacity of it. In that case, make sure that your charger is capable of discharging lipos and as soon as you reach the lowest voltage in the charger, make sure that you charge it right away.

There is a lot of good information here:
http://www.fromeco.org/

Cheers,

Will