Cycling Packs for my 550

[Cralis]

I just got my Kong Power charger. Id like to know - when the charger cycles the pack - does it obey the 80% discharge rule? Or does it discharge to 0, then recharge?

[Cralis]

Ok. I cycled my new DN 2cell pack for my CX2. All fine. I then tried to cycle my KP2200 (new) packs and got a connection error.

All connections seemed ok. Tried again to cycle. failed.

Then tried to balance charge them and it reported a 320? dlfference. So it is balancing now and that 320 is down to 240 when I left it.

Does this seem normal for new packs?

[Drew816]

Don't know about your specific charger, I use a Cell Pro 4s and I'm pretty liberal in the amounts I take out of lipos (hoping that they'll last me longer). I've 'heard' that the best bet is to fill them all up and take out a small amount for 5-6 discharges, so on a T-Rex pack charge it up, hovering practice for 2 minutes, let it cool down, recharge and I do this 6 times total and then I'm off and running. I still take it easy for a few more charges and again I aim to never get below 3.6 on any cells which on my Cell Pro comes back as 8-10% Fuel Left (again this is a Cell Pro specific number so don't go by it!).

Not sure if this is all correct or not, but I can tell you the few batteries I didn't bother to slowly 'break in' started to show signs of dying within 35 charges; one ABF and one Flight Power both of which still work but they start to give up the ghost with 20-35% of Fuel remaining.

Anyone else?

[jayrok1018]

I have the KP100 too. By default the KP100 won't discharge/cycle past 3.3v per cell. Its in the PDF manual. It can be changed to increase or decrease limits, but they seem OK at the default. Low end limit on LiPO can be 2.75 ~ 3.6 and high can be set to 4.16 ~ 4.20.

Not sure why it'll go as low as 2.25v on LiPO, maybe someone wanna take if from here>?

[mysticmead]

Not sure why it'll go as low as 2.25v on LiPO, maybe someone wanna take if from here>?

because the kongs are supposed to be able to go that low and not kill the pack... not that any sane person would do that on a regular basis

[Cralis]

But, brand new batteries out of the box - I assume there may/will be an imbalance in the cells, and therefore, a good balance charge would be required first up? After that, they should keep the same voltage - but balancing is still recommended?

[mysticmead]

balance every time you charge and you'll have balanced packs