Best charge rate for 30Q Battery?

Yes, that is the default. For AAA’s and smaller lithium ion batteries, I lower the current, and really because I don’t trust the stability of these smaller sizes, particularly smaller lithium ion batteries due to issues I’ve had with 14500’s in the past. My best charge rate is the easy charge rate. Ideally my chargers would have programmable defaults so I could dedicate them to certain cells, so I have to take more time on smaller batteries. Almost every time I throw a battery on the charger, charging faster has no benefits for me, and slight negatives. When I absolutely need to charge quickly, and none of my other hundreds of 18650’s are charged sufficiently, I crank up the current even if it means increased battery wear.

I charge my batteries as I need em so i charge at 2C or higher.

I charge 18650’s at 1A, 0.5A takes to long for me to stay around the charger although I have some old cells I do charge at 0.5A but I find it annoying. With my opus I charge em at 700mA when I got the time for it. I find it a nice compromise.

Based on the specs, it looks like charging the 30Q cells at 2 Amp shouldn’t be much of an issue, maybe at the expense of very slightly diminished life/capacity.

If I ever acquire a faster charger, I won’t hesitate to charge them at 2A. For now I’m stuck at 1A.

i charge mine regularly at 2A i dont mind losing life cycle they are cheap anyways but 3A when i am in hurry, i tried 4A but the cells got rather hot.
I could charge up to 8A (30Q max charging is 4A based on spec) and charge 8 18650(4S2P) at the same time if i want to but 3A is warm enough for the batteries and i dont usually need charging that fast.

Charging @4A as 4s pack.

Doing battery testing here we charge 30Q’s at 3A and over a handful of charges haven’t seen degradation. Of course over the long term you’ll see a little bit more degradation.

Samsung publishes that charging the entire battery at 4A you get 98% of the capacity that you get charging at 1.5A.

All of Samsung’s cycle life testing is done with charging at 4A so I can’t imagine it causes that huge of a difference in long term cycle life because if it did they’d probably want to publish cycle life with more normal charges.

At the same time, if you have time to charge at a lower charge rate it can never hurt.

that is good to know, but the heat generated @4A charging 30Q rather disconcerting though.

I normally just charge my 18650s and 26650s at 500mA. I’m rarely in any type of rush so I just throw them on the charger earlier in the day if I know I’m going to want fully charged batteries that night. I also figure that it’s easier on both the batteries and the charger. So, when I do charge at 1A or higher it feels super fast to me.

Ditto for me and overnight charging while rotating cells.

especially since they will age out before we wear them out.
that said i also charge all 18650 at 1a and 26650 at 2a.
i have plenty of spares so no rush.

Bought my very first batch of 30Q batteries. Put them on the LiitoKala Lii-500 for "NOR Test", more than 6 hours later, they are all terminated on between 3.6 and 3.8V, when I was expecting them to terminate close to 4.2V. Just want to make sure this is not normal???

If the “End” display is blinking, then they are still charging back up. And if so, what you’re seeing is the current charging voltage, not final. Once the “End” display stops blinking, this will be an indication that the re-charging has finished and you should see voltage close to 4.22.

I have SC4 charger and my 30Q charged up to 4.20 evenly.

I didn’t realise the “End” blinking display means it has not finished. Crappppppppppp! Now I got to do it all over again. Back in the charger all of them go. :person_facepalming:

But you already got your result (capacity), so all you need to do is just top them off at this point. No need to run the whole NOR Test again.

For an example how different charge/discharge currents can affect battery life, look here: https://batteryworkshop.msfc.nasa.gov/presentations/Perf_Safe_Test_Panasonic_Li-Ion_NCR_18650_Cells_JRead.pdf

Unfortunately it isn’t for 30Qs but gives a rough image how does it look .

I keep my cells around 3,90V and charge with 0.5A if I can plan in advance. If a fast charge is reqired, I use 2 amps. In extreme situations I can charge with 4Afrom hobby charger.

It’s interesting, but like you stated, it’s for an NCR cell which was not designed to handle high charge/discharge current. It would be nice to see how a high current INR cell such as the 30Q would do on such a test.

Not as extensive as the Pana tests but there are quite a few at the end of this Samsung INR18650-30Q datasheet
Cycle life - charge@4A discharge@15A, see page 8/17
Cycle life - charge@4A discharge@22A, see page 9/17

I put them back on charge right before I went to bed last night, and woke up to the charger saying they are on 19xx mAh with a solid END on display this time. I am going to re-do the NOR test again, but won’t take them out this time all 4 slots display a solid END.

I was a bit too impatient last night, as I wanted to try them out on the Zanflare F1. On an old Panasonic 18650B (which I believe to be unprotected), I wasn’t able to engage turbo mode. Or rather, it seems double clicking it into turbo mode does not seem to output double the light output. I know I am sidetracking on the topic, does anyone know the max discharge current rate on the green Panasonic 18650B?

According to this datasheet (note that the PDF says “tentative”, so it may not be final…)

http://www.batteryonestop.com/baotongusa/products/datasheets/li-ion/SANYO-NCR18650B-3400mAh.pdf

the Sanyo NCR18650B has max continuous discharge current of 4.875A.

I wonder if the Panasonic NCR18650B is the same as the Sanyo NCR18650B…

Re: LiitoKala Li-500 Engineer’s ‘NOR’ test, (also refer to HKJ’s review for more info), it does a Charge (to Full 4.20v), then Discharge (to approximately 2.80-2.84v cut-off voltage), then does a Charge (to Full).

The display shows an “END” when the Discharge portion of the test has been completed, and if I’m not mistaken, the time display (eg. 6 hours something) is the total time it took to discharge the battery from Full to the Cut-off voltage.

Note that when the “END” is shown, the Lii-500 charger will be charging the battery back to Full, so if the voltage is not yet near 4.20v, then the charger is still charging up the batteries (even when the “END” indicator has been shown), afaik, there will be no indication that it has finished charging to full (last stage of the NOR test), other than the voltage has risen to 4.20v (I think it’s mentioned that the Lii-500’s voltage display won’t update/change anymore after finishing final charging phase? (I could be wrong though…)

Also note that the discharge rate, if I remember correctly is set to 0.5A or 0.25A, depending on the Charge rate selection (1000ma & 700mA Charge rate selected = 500mA Discharge rate). So the total discharging time will be longer if 0.5A charge rate is selected (ie. 0.25A discharge rate)