Bringing LIPO's back from the dead..............

[jgeorgic]

I have several E-Flite 7.4V 800mAh 2 cell lipos that have lost there fight time.I had read on a previous post that you can charge them on the Nicad setting for a minute ??????????? to bring them back to life

Is there any truth to this ? Or is there something else I can try ?

[WayneBrown]

if they've degraded from use over time, they are done.
dispose of them and replace with new ones.
Using a non-lipo charger is not for the indoors either, if you decide to try it, do it on concrete outside.

[Coolice]

Hey,

The trick I mentioned in another thread is more to revive a lipo which has been discharged below 3 votls per cell, the NiCad trick just brings the voltage back up to allow the proper lipo setting on the charger to work as normal.

As mentioned above if your packs are just loosing duration through age then the above trick will not work and will just be dangerous.

Unlike a NiCad Lipo's do not have a cell memory and cycling will not bring them back to life. Lipo's just degrade with each charge and discharge no matter how hard they are used, just the harder they are run the less time they last.

Sounds like you might need some new packs.
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[WillJames]

Unlike a NiCad Lipo's do not have a cell memory and cycling will not bring them back to life. Lipo's just degrade with each charge and discharge no matter how hard they are used, just the harder they are run the less time they last.


Interesting.... I can take my Ion-X to the field and fly the same set of packs 4 times over a day and each flight gets a little better performance.

You also can go to the field with the Ion-X. Fly about 2 minutes. Land and top off the packs and they will be HOT HOT HOT. Better performance from if you had just flown the packs to 6 minutes initially.

Li-Po's are definitely interesting.

[Coolice]

Hey Will,

Oh yeah, LiPo's need to reach their operating temperature before they give their most power. In the UK as it's quite cold at times we warm them up in the car or in our pockets and only fit them when we are about to fly.
I cannot remember what the optimum temperature is now for a lipo to be at to prove it's best performance.

Originally we noticed this last year, at the time I had a lipo monitor fitted to my model to signal 3 volts per cell (12 volts). On the first lift off in the cold weather the light would come on to signal a low lipo voltage, this was on a fully charged pack and stumped us a bit. But then we realised that by flying for a minute and then landing to remove the power load on the pack, we had brought the cells up to operating temperature.
We could then take off with no warning light and fly the pack as normal until the voltage did hit 3 volts per cell.

By the last sentance I really meant the harder the pack is used the shorter it's life span is overall, eg. it's life. Then duration suffers with age of the pack.
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