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And when discharging a NiCd/NiMH/Pb (lead-acid) battery, the first time you press the + button you
will again see the elapsed time along with the average voltage of the battery that will be shown when
the discharge process has ended. Pressing the + button a second time will also show the internal
temperature of the charger and the peak voltage of the battery at the beginning of the discharge
process while pressing the + button a third time will show the elapsed time in addition to the input
voltage from the power source.
Discharging Complete/End
Discharging will be complete/end automatically when the battery reaches the appropriate per cell
voltage. When this occurs you will see the following screen:
From there you can press the ENTER button once to display the data from the discharge process, as
well as use the +/ – buttons to scroll through other screens, including the screen that features
Battery.IR to check the Internal Resistance (IR) of the battery and/or individual cells (for
LiPo/LiIon/LiFe and with the balancer connected) by pressing the ENTER button while on that screen.
Or, on most other screens you can press the ENTER button to exit the charge process completely.
Cooling Fans During/After Discharge
During the discharge process one or both fans may come on at low or high settings to help control the
internal temperature of the charger. In some cases, even after the discharge process has
completed/ended the fans will continue to run even when the internal temp has reached near ambient
temperature. If this happens you can power the charger off then on again and the fans will remain off
until the next charge/discharge process begins (and only if needed).
Please also note that there are plans to offer enhanced fan control and the ability to set temperature
cutoffs in future firmware releases.
CYCLE MODE
The TP820CD is capable of charging/discharging batteries automatically by cycling them up to 15
times. This can be particularly useful for testing and/or rejuvenating NiCd/NiMH batteries and
please
note that we DO NOT recommend cycling LiPo/LiIon/LiFe batteries as it comes at great risk
unless you monitor all charge/discharge cycles in person fully and set the discharge cutoff
voltage to a level high enough to prevent over-discharge.
Even still it has been shown that,
unlike other chemistries such as NiCd/NiMH, it is typically not possible to rejuvenate LiPo/LiIon/LiFe
cells/batteries through charge/discharge cycling.
Please also keep in mind that aside from selecting the order of charge->discharge (CHG->DCHG) or
discharge->charge (DCHG->CHG) and the number of cycles, you must set the chemistry type, cell
count, capacity and charge current rate in the Charge Mode, and the discharge current rate and the
per cell voltage cutoff in the Discharge Mode. After setting the correct values in the Charge Mode,
wait until none of the adjustable values are flashing, then press the + button once to enter the
Discharge Mode. After setting the correct values in this mode, wait until none of the values are
flashing then press the + button one more time to enter the Cycle Mode.