{"id":1679,"date":"2004-06-30T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2004-06-30T20:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lee.org\/blog\/archives\/2004\/06\/30\/about-lipolys\/"},"modified":"2004-06-30T12:00:47","modified_gmt":"2004-06-30T20:00:47","slug":"about-lipolys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2004\/06\/30\/about-lipolys\/","title":{"rendered":"About LiPolys"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With nothing better to do on the plane, I charged, discharged and charged the   LiPoly battery to see how much capacity it really had. I got some strange   results:The battery is a Thunderpower 2100, with a manufacturing stamp on the label   of 6-4-04<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>6-28-04: I set the Triton charger to charge at 2.1 AH, 11.1 volts. It ran     for 69 minutes. Final charge was 12.56 volts, 1.796 AH put into the battery<\/li>\n<li>6-29-04: I set the Triton to discharge at 2.1 AH down to 9 volts. After 56     min, the Triton stopped at 10.5 volts, having discharged 1.635 AH.<\/li>\n<li>6-29-04: I set the Triton to charge at 1 AH. It started charging at 10.69     volts and finished at 12.56 volts, having put 1.654 AH into the battery after     110 minutes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, what&#8217;s up with the Triton only drawing down to 10.5 volts? And why did it   only pull about 1.7 AH instead of 2.1 AH? I called Sal at NESail and he had a   lot to say.<\/p>\n<p>First, he warned me very sternly (!) that I shouldn&#8217;t ever ever ever   discharge a LiPoly on a charger. There&#8217;s no need to and it could damage the   battery by drawing the battery down too much. Discharging in a charger is bad   because, if a LiPoly is brought down too flat, it&#8217;s capacity will be permanently   significantly diminished; a charger discharges the battery too slowly to hit the   obvious 3 volt\/cell wall. If you are flying, the high drain on the pack lets the   drain work correctly. In addition, a good speed control will tell you when it&#8217;s   time to come in for a charge. <strong>You shouldn&#8217;t drain the battery more than 75%   or they&#8217;ll go bad on you. That&#8217;s 1.575 AH on a 2.1 AH battery.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It sounds like the Triton company is aware of this 75% rule. That&#8217;s why they   the charger only draws down to 10.5v on a 3 cell 11.1 v pack. <strong>The Triton   charger seems to have a user interface problem<\/strong>. On the discharge cycle, the   options it gives are &#8220;3v&#8221;, &#8220;6v&#8221;, and &#8220;9v&#8221;. The obvious implication is that it   will draw the cell down to the specified amount but it doesn&#8217;t. It draws the   pack down to what is considered &#8220;safe&#8221; flat&#8230; on the &#8220;9v&#8221; setting, it draws to   10.5v. Instead, it should give options like the following: &#8220;1 cell&#8221;, &#8220;2 cell&#8221;,   &#8220;3 cell&#8221;. Or &#8220;3.7v&#8221;, &#8220;7.4v&#8221;, &#8220;11.1v&#8221;. Or &#8220;3.5v&#8221;, &#8220;7v&#8221;, &#8220;10.5v&#8221; because that&#8217;s   what it draws down to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With nothing better to do on the plane, I charged, discharged and charged the LiPoly battery to see how much capacity it really had. I got some strange results:The battery is a Thunderpower 2100, with a manufacturing stamp on the label of 6-4-04 6-28-04: I set the Triton charger to charge at 2.1 AH, 11.1 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}