DISCHARGER SUPPOSED TO GET REALLY BLOODY HOT?
 

When i'm discharging my gun, the lil discharging block gets really hot.

Is this normal? i mean it's to the point that it will melt plastic.

what kind of discharger it is? Any links to pics or info on it?
I have a TM decharger and besides the little light that comes on it creates heat intentionaly to drain the energy out of the battery. It should be normal.

Dischargers work by converting the electrical energy in to another form of energy - typically as heat.

Depending on the discharge rate of your discharger, the heat will vary. Most "intelligent" chargers discharge at a rate of 4A with moderate heat. Some cheaper unmonitored ones could discharge at a much higher rate which will drain your battery quick, but will also become very hot. Another negative side effect is that discharging at such high rates is harmful to your battery pack.

He either has the Guarder or the TM discharger.

it's the gaurder- i just didn't know how hot it was supposed to get that's all. Didn't wanna ruin anything :cool:

In fact the closest you are from the discharge limit of your pack, the best it is, even more for Ni-Cd packs. Typically a large pack should be around 30A and a mini pack, around 10A

And YES it is normal to get hot. I have seen some perfectly working dischargers melt their plastic case and there was nothing wrong. just needed a little more aeration.

I'm not really sure where you heard that discharging at the highest possible rate is be best for a pack. I just don't see what benefit extra thermal load brings to a battery. High discharge rates run into diffusion issues where ions deplete close to electrodes which decreases cell output voltage prematurely which results in incomplete discharge. I'm not sure if some form of cell reversal can occur due to insufficient electrolyte diffusion. You also get into thermal cycling issues where you find out how fast organic materials (like plastic separators) age when you heat them up that much. Do you have cycle data to show that cells perform better in the long term with very high discharge loads?

Diffusing the energy from a 30A current is quite a feat. A 9.6v pack driving 30A would have to dissapate 144W (at max discharge half the voltage drop is over the load, half in the internal resistance of the pack) which is quite a lot of power. A 2Ah pack (assuming large NiCd) would take 2 minutes to discharge at 30A. You'd be able to boil 50mL of water (starting at room temp) with that much energy dissapated in the pack (17280J!).

144W probably exceeds the sustained thermal dissapation limit of anything in the airsoft realm. Melting plastic cases does not meet CSA safety specifications let alone the technical design limits for most transistors.