Can a person charge their batteries too often?

[bushmaster]

I asked this question on the general discussion board and only one poster seemed to genuinely recognize what I was asking, so I am coming to the experts.
If a battery has a certain number of recharge cycles in its lifespan, should I try to get near to complete discharge before recharging? I know that we should not totally discharge li-ion batteries, but when purchasing them, I commonly see them advertised with a certain number of recharge cycles--200 for instance. So if I have a 14500 battery in my mod that has only 3 hours use on its charge and I'm going out for the day, I can be pretty sure that this battery will take me through the day, but just to be sure, I switch it out with a fresh one and throw the old one on the charger.
Have I effectively reduced my battery's lifespan a full recharge cycle? Not a big deal once, but suppose I did it every day? I could shrink my battery's lifespan(number of recharge cycles) in half.
Or doesn't it work that way? Does a partial recharge reduce a battery's life less than a full or 2/3rds charge? Should I push my battery to near full discharge to get a complete lifespan from it?
Thanking you in advance.

 

[rolygate]

Although batteries are quoted as having '300 recharge cycles' or whatever, many of those being used for e-cigs won't get anywhere near the advertised service life because they are way underpowered for the job. Pulling too much current, over-discharging (taking it down too low), faulty charging, and leaving on the shelf for a long time are the main ways to kill a battery.

Any of those will take life off it.

Luckily Li-ion's of any kind have no memory or full charge/discharge requirement, so the earlier you take them off-load and recharge them the better. Theoretically you would get more recharge cycle life this way - but in practice all you will do is extend its life a bit since the excess power draw is going to kill the battery anyway, before you get to the 'real' end of life.

There are very few 14500 batteries that can supply the power an atty takes with no effect on cell life, and the usual xxxx-fire batteries used certainly don't comply. You would need top-quality Li-ion's like Pila, or Li-Mn or Li-FePo4 cells, to comply with the C rating needed for full life. Pulling 1.5 to 2.5 amps from standard 14500's will shorten their life anyway - so worrying about other aspects may be pointless. You might get away with using high-resistance atties like stock 901s and 801s though - these have a very high resistance compared to a 510, 3.5 ohms as against 2.3 ohms for a stock 510 and 1.5 ohms for 510 LR. Any 510 will pull too much from the average 14500 cell (it's why the vapor off a 510 is way higher than the 801 for example).

But if you can be bothered, then it's fine to recharge them early; and if you had decent batteries it would be good for them.

It's not till you get up to the 16xxx or better, the 17xxx series cell size format, that batteries really have enough grunt to run an atomizer with zero consequences of any kind. Think of a 14500 cell as being like a .22 caliber, maybe you get the picture that way.

 

[Kent C]

A good resource on batteries:

How to charge - when to charge table

... check out other subjects in the left frame.....