How many charge cycles can you expect to get out of a spektrum battery?

[basher27]

I have a G2, 3S battery with about 95 charge cycles on it wondering if that is getting near end of life or just getting started?

I do make sure to keep the battery charged at least to a storage level when not in use which I’ve heard helps prolong the life

 

[rotauq]

300-500 cycles is normal for a lipo. I am not familiar with spektrum batteries/chargers specifically, but i assume they are smart enough to measure the internal resistance. Once a cell goes beyond 10 mOhm they are to be considered as poor (they can still be used but will have less capacity, run a little hotter and take a lot longer to balance charge), above 30 mOhm they are end of life.

 

[Niekname]

If you take good care of it (i. e. Storage charge, temps) it can last a long time. However our RC lipo's go through a lot more then the average lipo cell so you will probably get less cycles then the chemistry is technically capable of. If you want to check how good it still is, check capacity (<90% of rated capacity is considered decent, but keep in mind manufacturers sometimes put higher capacities then the cells actually are). Voltage sag (storage charge, let sit for a week and if it has lost less then 0.1v it is good) and internal resistance. This is quite the work, but you could do an even more rigirous test, or just run em untill they blow. However I would check IR at least. If you are interested take a look at batteryuniversity.com and cellsaviours.com.

 

[basher27]

300-500 cycles is normal for a lipo. I am not familiar with spektrum batteries/chargers specifically, but i assume they are smart enough to measure the internal resistance. Once a cell goes beyond 10 mOhm they are to be considered as poor (they can still be used but will have less capacity, run a little hotter and take a lot longer to balance charge), above 30 mOhm they are end of life.

That is very helpful information. I have a pretty sophisticated spectrum charger. Do you know how I’m able to see how many mOhm’s I’m using?

 

[rotauq]

IR will be measured during charging, so it can only be shown then

 

[basher27]

IR will be measured during charging, so it can only be shown then

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So if I understand this correctly, my cells are right about two and as long as they don’t go above 10 or so it’s considered a good quality battery? I am currently charging a generation two battery wondering if the first generation with the balance lead would still show this information?

 

[rotauq]

So if I understand this correctly, my cells are right about two and as long as they don’t go above 10 or so it’s considered a good quality battery? I am currently charging a generation two battery wondering if the first generation with the balance lead would still show this information?

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I'd say for non-speedrunning applications:
excellent < 2 < good < 5 decent < 10 < poor < 30 < EoL

btw degradation doesn't go linear. The higher the IR, the quicker it will degrade.

Measuring IR is a feature of the charger. It should be able to do it for every battery.

 

[basher27]

I'd say for non-speedrunning applications:
excellent < 2 < good < 5 decent < 10 < poor < 30 < EoL

btw degradation doesn't go linear. The higher the IR, the quicker it will degrade.

Measuring IR is a feature of the charger. It should be able to do it for every battery.

When you say non-spectrum compared to a spectrum battery is there much difference? I don’t have any non-spectrum batteries.

 

[hobo]

300-500 cycles is normal for a lipo. I am not familiar with spektrum batteries/chargers specifically, but i assume they are smart enough to measure the internal resistance. Once a cell goes beyond 10 mOhm they are to be considered as poor (they can still be used but will have less capacity, run a little hotter and take a lot longer to balance charge), above 30 mOhm they are end of life.

30 m0hm

 

[jkflow]

Charging cycles for a lipo are actually much higher, somewhere in the 1500 range nowadays but that assumes rather tame discharging etc.
Majority of teh damage will come from the mechanical abuse in our RC's and running it to LVC. So yes 100-150 is a good life,300-500 you are doing exceptionally well but you are not having fun with your RC .
Next is lifetime as well, ~5 years or so.

IR values above are a good guide but make sure to measure when you get the lipo and than keep an eye on it. In high current applications anything above 10mOhm will result in significant shorter runtime. Now that is for the higher powered cells ~ above 30C. Below 30 is truly only for powering something at 5-10C range.

That is my opinion and what I have observed. Anything above 5mOhm is rather useless in boats already if you are doing it right. My Tugboat can get away with my trash lipos.

 

[rotauq]

30 m0hm

gotta draw a line somewhere. 'Poor' is still good for running some fans or other low power application.

When you say non-spectrum compared to a spectrum battery is there much difference? I don’t have any non-spectrum batteries.

Spectrum has a smart function so it remembers some basic info, like you amount of charges. Regular lipo's don't have this feature. Does it make spektrum battery better? id say no.

 

[RC Steve]

The biggest change in battery life for me was changing the low voltage cut off on my trucks ESCs from 3.2 to 3.4v. My batteries aren't massively out of balance any more when I pull them out of my trucks. The difference in run time turned out to be minimal.

 

[jkflow]

Smart move, I have mine even higher whenever possible. Minimal change in runtime but much longer lipo life.
Keep in mind, in order for LVC to activate it has to be below that level for a little-bit and anything below 3.5 does permanent damage to your cells.
Just a matter of time and temperature as to how much damage. A couple seconds will do it already.

 

[RC Steve]

I have mine even higher whenever possible.

I run MAX6 G2s on everything and low voltage cut off comes in low, medium, and high. I'm assuming high is 3.4v, but that's just a guess on my part.

 

[CrashBoom]

I usually try to stop around 3.7v, not much to gain beyond that. You're at about 10-15% capacity at that point.