Battery Health

[Toastie]

Hi,

How do you go about checking if a battery is still decent? I presume you would just measure the voltage when fully charged and obviously an intact wrap & insulator?

I would normally just replace the batteries, but it's no secret moneys tight at the moment. The battery's in question are 25r's from fogstar with a few from a local vape shop. Little less than a year old and haven't had extensive use whilst I've owned them as I also used lipo mods. They did have a stint of mech use.

I was thinking of charging them in my xstar, which is the 4 bay basic model, then putting each one into my 521 tab and using it to measure the voltage. Would that work?

I will be picking up some HG2s for use in single battery mods with mtl rta's. This is just to tide me over till I can get them.

 

[mattyk2010]

I wouldn't stress too much about checking to be honest [emoji4] i know some folk who have had 25r cells in constant rotation for 18 months that are still fine and by the sounds of it yours haven't had that much use, i think the only time id be worried is if I Was pushing them to the Brink of what they can handle so just charge them and use them and see how they go

 

[Toastie]

Thanks. Always good to check. I'm quite fond of my face, even if others aren't aha.

 

[bellyman]

I have batteries that I use from 6 years ago. They just go in a power bank/charger. I have a 10 bay one, god knows what the mAh is [emoji23]

 

[Toastie]

Haha. Well I've charged 4 of them, and they all read 4.10v if I put them in the 521 tab.

 

[oldhippydude]

I bought eight 25r over
3 years ago.
In the first year I cycled through 4 of them and did not use the other 4. (mechs high res coils)
After the first year i cycled through all eight..

I was aware that some were not lasting as long as I wanted so decided to test them. i charged them all then tested the voltage after four days.
I got rid of four that were reading 4.1v to 4.2v and kept four that were reading from 4.5v to 4.7v.

Having never pushed the cells hard (never much more than 5 amps) then they should all still have been safe to use longer.

I seem to remember reading that samsung regards the life of the 25r to be when it is only holding 60% charge. The article did state the number of charge/discharge cycles and I think it was something like 300 cycles but it might have been higher.

I have the impression that unless you are abusing your cells then most of us will get pissed of about the battery life in our mod before the cell is actually unsafe.

 

[Deleted member 54254]

I use Xtar chargers, predominantly because they give a readout of how many mAh they put in a cell each charge. Some of my batteries are over two years old and applying similar logic to @oldhippydude monitor the charge they take as I know the max mAh each cell can hold, none so far have degraded to the point where they don't take a good charge and piss me off in use. I rotate cells in use so that probably adds to their useful life. Fogstar love me I guess cos I have a wide and varied selection these days

 

[Andy S]

I use (mostly but not exclusively) VTC5As and I find it's not the voltage but the capacity that decays over time. As long as they're physically sound, I replace them when I'm having to recharge them too often.

 

[Toastie]

Cheers all. Just running them now and see how long they each last. I was under the impression that fully charged voltage would drop, along with mah. Don't have any means to measure the mah other than just vaping it.

 

[Andy S]

Cheers all. Just running them now and see how long they each last. I was under the impression that fully charged voltage would drop, along with mah. Don't have any means to measure the mah other than just vaping it.

There are chargers that display both the present voltage of the battery and the number of mAh that have gone in. Mine is a 4-bay XTAR VC4 and there are several others than can do this. Mine's not high end - there are others that will also allow you to set your own voltage as charging to a bit less than maximum is widely believed to extend the life of the battery.