LiPo Care

Some LiPo care tips from CommonSenseRC

• Try not to discharge your packs beyond 80% of their capacity. For
example try to use only 1600mAh of a 2000mAh pack. This will keep
the temperature down and prolong the life of your pack. Do not fly
your plane until the “low voltage cut-off” kicks in.

• Balance your packs after every flight. An “out of balance” pack and
a perfectly balanced pack look exactly alike. Charging an “out of
balance” pack one time with a conventional serial charger will result
in overcharging some of your cells and will do permanent damage.
This will shorten the life of the pack quicker than anything.

• Whenever possible, charge your packs at the slowest rate you can.
Of course, Lipos should never be charged unattended, so choose the
slowest rate that will still allow you to keep an eye on the process.
All battery types respond better to a slow charge.

Over discharging a LiPo is the fastest way to ruin it, never go below 3.7v per cell. Trust me, I once overdrained one of my $130 5S1P E-Smart batteries and when I tried recharging it the battery had a dead cell which puffed VERY bad, at which point it became very dangerous to use, I dis-charged it and had to get rid of it

Since then I've never over-drained any of my LiPo's and have never had to replace any of them. It was an expensive mistake on my part