Composite bats break-in question

[obbay]

How many hits/how much time does it take to break in a composite bat?
DD has a CF3 we got in spring of 2009. bat was kind of dead so she used her double wall aluminum bat most of the time. When she used the CF3 her hits had no pop, so I encouraged her to use the other bat.
Now I'm seeing other players who were nowhere near DD in slugging, now hitting bombs and they are all using composite bats.

The other day DD used the CF3 and hit a laser shot over the CF's head. Might this be a sign that her bat is finally getting broken in?

when it is getting broken in, is there a period of sometimes hot, sometimes not?
Her Doublewall is a 32/24 while the CF3 is 32/22 and I think mechanically she might swing better with the heavier bat- but she has trouble hitting fast pitching well.

 

[Hollyrockartist]

I asked DD's batting coach tonight about the composite bat situation. We are getting her a DeMarini CF5, which coach said would need 500 hits to break it in and then it's 8 glorious years of hits. He also said not to dare use it with the pitching machine (dimpled balls) because, until it's broken in, the barrel will shatter. My take - not EVER going to use it on the pitching machine! Just what I learned that I thought I'd share with ya...

 

[Daddy O]

Daughter has a cheap composite and also an RT. She likes the RT better but when she was still using composite it started out dead. We would go to the park every couple days and I would pitch her 2 or 3 buckets of balls. After a couple weeks we really started noticing alot more pop from the composite. But then I got a good deal on the RT and she hardly ever takes the composite out of her bag.

 

[obbay]

Thanks, this helps!
We use a batting cage that uses the soft Jugs balls and I think those will be ok to hit, (but otherwise we use practice bats when hitting the dimpled balls).
We haven't been in awhile, I think that may be a good way to get that bat working.