For years I discharged my lipos by cutting off the connectors and soaking them in salt water for days if not a week or more waiting for them to fully discharge. Maybe yall have found a better way to do it like I have so I figured Id share my way and let yall share yours and see where we land. I've always hated the salt water bath for a couple of reasons. Its messy, wastes salt, and I dont like having a jug of salt water just sitting around. It is a proven method though 
What I started doing a few years back when I started having various lipos go bad on me and start puffing while they were in storage was I soldered up a small 25mm 12v fan and a 5mm LED with a resistor on one end and a couple of various battery connectors on the other. First thing I do is hook up the lipo to my fan/LED contraption and let that sit in an ammo can outside for about 24 hours. Once the LED is completely out the pack will be under 2V. In order to discharge it down to practically zero I have a battery connector with both connectors bridged so I can plug it in to the pack thats less than 2V and let it finish discharging the rest of the way.
2V or less should actually be safe enough to dispose of in and of itself as I've tested this recently by driving a 16D nail through a 2S pack that was sitting at about 1.8V. It got the teenist bit warm but did nothing other than that. No smoke, no leaking, no nothing. I did this because I wanted to see if the last step was necessary or if I could just toss em out once the LED went out completely. I dont want to start a garbage truck fire after all.
So thats my method, what do you guys do?
What I started doing a few years back when I started having various lipos go bad on me and start puffing while they were in storage was I soldered up a small 25mm 12v fan and a 5mm LED with a resistor on one end and a couple of various battery connectors on the other. First thing I do is hook up the lipo to my fan/LED contraption and let that sit in an ammo can outside for about 24 hours. Once the LED is completely out the pack will be under 2V. In order to discharge it down to practically zero I have a battery connector with both connectors bridged so I can plug it in to the pack thats less than 2V and let it finish discharging the rest of the way.
2V or less should actually be safe enough to dispose of in and of itself as I've tested this recently by driving a 16D nail through a 2S pack that was sitting at about 1.8V. It got the teenist bit warm but did nothing other than that. No smoke, no leaking, no nothing. I did this because I wanted to see if the last step was necessary or if I could just toss em out once the LED went out completely. I dont want to start a garbage truck fire after all.
So thats my method, what do you guys do?
Last edited:
