Discharging batts?

[justo316]

How do you guys discharge your batteries (if at all). Mine are kinda old and I can't be bothered running them until they're fully dead cos they take ages to die out.

Someone said something about connecting a 12V bulb? Is it that easy?

[BALISTC]

I discharge mine at a low rate, using my Eagle CDC charger..

Apart from that, the 12V bulb dischargers are a great way of doing it.

[justo316]

Yeah my charger doesn't do it, neither does the charger Im considering buying.

So, do you just attached a single 12 v bulb, wait for it to die, and that's it?

[James]

I bought an Eagle Racing 1A discharger box. it has an LED on it that stops flashing when it's discharged. only problem with this box is it doesnt "shut off" as such, so leave it on the battery and forget about it and you could have a problem, ive done this before and luckily recovered my cells.

Ideally the best discharge boxes cost beans. the Novak discharge trays are excellent. If you want THE BEST then you need something that discharges each cell individually. not as a pack. (discharge tray). else something built into a good charger would do the trick.

I hope to goto Lithium Ion for my Mini-T soon, I'll be in the market for a new fancy charger. Leaning towards Duratrax ICE.

[BALISTC]

Duratrax ICE is very decent.

If I was still into electrics, I'd be leaning towards a good Li-Po charger also, but now I'm a pure nitro junkie, even the charger I have now is a bit overkill for a few hump packs and my starter box / roto start batteries :P

[Matt]

the 12v light is a good idea because you can see when the battery drops dead, but there is one thing missing from that setup...

mu suggestion is to connect a resistor to wire and use a voltmeter to see the voltage drop. disconnect a NiMH at around 5volts, and a NiCad at around 0.20 volts.

the volitmeter is the key part because nimh shouldnt be discharged below 5v, and nicads should be drained almost to the end... but let nicads go all the way to zero and the cells can go into negative polarity (the - becomes +) and its stuffed.

the resistor i use is 10w 10ohm (i _think_) and ive put the resistor in a small box. the whole thing i made at home with merely a soldering iron and cost me about $7 in parts from Jaycar.

i took pics as i made the box and i'll stick them on this thread when i get home tonight.

[justo316]

I think maybe I should just get a different charger than I had in mind. One that will discharge for me. The thought of ruining my cells from discharging wrongly is scaring me. Plus the fact I will have to babysit them as they run down is gonna get annoying, and it's not like I race or anything.

[Squeezer]

I thought the Light globe thing was hooking multiple globes up in Series to make it drain quite quickly.

Ive seen some pictures of home made discharge boxes using that method.

[justo316]

Yeah, I think I'd need quite a few more. Supposedly, enough to drain the batteries at the same rate my motor would do during racing.

[James]

10 to 20amp discharging! !evil