At 3.01 volts? Nah, that’s not even a “normal” complete drain. Most cells are good down to 2.8V in normal use, and some can even drain down to 2.5V safely. Just charge it back up and use it!
Not quite. At least Sony (VTC6) and LG (HE2) specified “2V minimum” for some of its cells.
And I'll be honest. I harvested a few Samsung ICR18650-26C cells from a laptop pack months ago. A couple of its cells were a bit below 2V, and some of the others were pretty low too. I discarded 2 cells after some tests (the lowest capacity ones which also showed slightly worse self-discharge). The remaining cells were kept in a box. Some weeks ago gave 'em an equalizing charge to observe their self discharge ratio. For now there are small differences but overall they look pretty good.
I notice that after draining batteries in a flashlight, the voltage often recovers a bit (eg. I often test battery capacity on the MC3000 drained to 2.50v, but after awhile, the voltages begins to recover. High-drain good batteries can stay below 3.0v for quite some time after getting drained. But higher-resistance or poor quality batteries tend to jump very quickly up to higher voltages.
Say if I drain to 2.50v, but then let it stay that way for 1 day or several days, will the battery start getting damaged? (the battery voltage probably would have recovered to 3.0v or higher after a few days).
Everyone comes here and sings his/her particular son. The question is, what do you want to believe or how do you believe on a subconscious level? That's what matters.
In the above case, I wouldn't care. I've super slow drained batteries to around 2.5V (using an old 219B testing emitter as load) and the battery voltage recovered to nearly 3 Volts. It also recovers much faster than that.
Do I think there's many scaremongerness in all of this? Probably. ;-)
Yeah it depends on the battery ....but the newer cells are generally 2,5v is empty // and older cells were 2.8v .
the thing to do is give them at least a resting voltage of 3.7 volts and not leave it at too low of a voltage .At 3.1v. you have nothing to worry about .
I really do have rifle primers I want to dispose of. Free to anyone who wants to pick them up in San Francisco, CA (hazmat shipping would be a killer).