Cool time required for battery charging?

[Marble Street Studio]

Hi all,

I have recently purchased a Breeze 4K to add to my drone arsenal for commercial photography use. Last week I was using our Inspire 1 Raw on a all day shoot and was needing to charge batteries as they came out of the drone. The DJI TB48 Intelligent Flight Battery has built in circuitry that wont allow the battery to charge until they have cooled off. I'm going to assume that the Yuneec 1150mAh batteries do not have this protection built in so.....

Is there a recommended cool down time frame for throwing a battery back into the charger or is it okay to charge right away as they come out of the drone?

Also, with these Lipo batteries, is there a way to cool the battery quicker such as a cooler with some ice packs inside and have the batteries suspended above the packs?

Thanks all!

Dave
Marble Street Studio

 

[gwhuntoon]

Basically nominal room/outside temperature or maybe slightly warm. Cool is better, you should never attempt to charge a warm/hot battery, let it rest and cool off. I also find that even though there is a LVC, low voltage cutoff, if I run them down that far, they get warmer than if I just stop them before that, (and shorten the life).

For the field I would imagine a cooler with ice packs would accelerate this process. At home, I drop them in the freezer. It's actually nice that DJI provides thermal sensing for charging. This could prove handy for not only initiating a charge but stopping it if the temperature rises above the preset. I have been able to immediately attempt recharging Yuneec packs and the charger/battery will let me so I would agree that no, there is no thermal protection for charging when hot unless it needs to be really hot to test, but I wouldn't want to risk it.

 

[DoomMeister]

I think there may be some thermal circuitry to the Breeze batteries. I have gotten the blue flashing on the OEM charger when I put a battery on it right after a ten minute flight. After a ten minute cooling period it charged fine.

I have found the OWM charger to do a good job of charging and balancing the Breeze batteries. Either the charger or the battery packs have over charge protection in them. If left on the charger for a while after charging is complete, there is minimal or no current draw as the battery will be at room temp. When a battery is removed shortly after charging is complete it will be warm to the touch.

 

[Marble Street Studio]

Thank you gwhuntoon and DoomMeister for your replies!

gwhuntoon - It's interesting that you mentioned the freezer. On the shoot last week I was doing aerial images of four hotels in and around the Plaza at Santa Fe NM. Once I realized the issue of the DJI batteries, I would put them in the hotel refrigerators to cool them off.

DoomMeister - Thank you for the info on a ten minute cool down time frame.

Once again, thank you!

Dave
Marble Street Studio