cordless drill batteries

[Matt@]

feeling a bit miffed as I now have 2 duff cordless drills due to batteries not holding charge anymore. One an atlas copco and one an 18V milwaulkie both bought new - 4 batteries usless. Admittedly the Atlas is 10 yrs old but hasnt had great use and the Milwaulkie alot newer. First drill I bought and the charger conked out and it was cheaper to buy another drill with charger than a charger on its own!

Anyone know where I can buy batteries at a good price or am I now in for a thirdnew cordless drill?

The above drills do seem well made but the batteries are dung

 

[Roughcut]

I've had the same problem with a set of Bosch "Professional" cordless tools I bought a few years ago.
Cordless drill, Jigsaw, Circular Saw, Planer.
I only used the tools occasionally for Diy, but stupidly I didn't register them for the 3 year warranty with Bosch.
Complete waste of money imo.
Got fed up with using the 24 volt circular saw after a few uses as just was not powerful enough to cope with more than a couple of cuts in 18mm ply/mdf.
Cordless Planer is rubbish.
Jigsaw broke after falling off of a table (Bosch rated the tools to be able to withstand a 3 metre drop)!?
Batteries now don't hold a charge and replacement Bosch batteries are £125+ each.
I know clone/refurbed batteries are available but im not going to bother spending any more money on them.
Wouldn't touch Bosch Professional tools with a barge pole in the future.

 

[Matt@]

I paid £200 each for these drills - makes me think I would be better off with soemthing from B&Q or Wickes then chucking em out and repeating the process

 

[Giff]

You can but a manual online http://www.nicdfix.com. I got the manual but you need car batteries with a higher voltage than the units you are reviving. So for my 18v batteries I needed 2 x 12v car batteries I hadn't got them so didn't try it out. It seems feasible maybe someone has some idea if it works. Geoff

 

[bodge]

It is also possible to open up the batteries and replace the cells inside. Apparently this usually works out a good deal cheaper than buying new batteries.

 

[beech1948]

Matt,

First I have to say that batteries are consumables. I do understand how annoying the rip off prices of drill manufacturers are.

I replaced the batteries in 2 of my Bosch pro drills about 12 months ago. I had given these hard use for 5 yrs so I considered it just about OK.

I bought 2 replacements for £40 from an online battery store. They have worked well, have been robust and I expect to get 5 yrs hard use out of them.

The batteries externally look identical to the Bosch ones.

My google search started out as Bosch drill batteries 18v and yielded many responses...I simply searched the web sites, picked the cheapest and phoned for a chat.

Hope this helps

Al

 

[soulboy]

You can but a manual online http://www.nicdfix.com. I got the manual but you need car batteries with a higher voltage than the units you are reviving. So for my 18v batteries I needed 2 x 12v car batteries I hadn't got them so didn't try it out. It seems feasible maybe someone has some idea if it works. Geoff

I bought this info on-line and followed the instructions on some DeWalt batteries, this trick worked briefly but a week later they were all dead, as a parrot.
chris

 

[beech1948]

You can but a manual online http://www.nicdfix.com. I got the manual but you need car batteries with a higher voltage than the units you are reviving. So for my 18v batteries I needed 2 x 12v car batteries I hadn't got them so didn't try it out. It seems feasible maybe someone has some idea if it works. Geoff

Might work for a week or three but once the batteries are deadish they have died...time to replace.

Al

 

[davem62]

hi i found this site while looking for replacement batteries,although not used them yet
dave http ://www.recellyourbattery.com

 

[Cowboy _Builder]

Try here .... http://www.buyaparcel.com/pageview.php? ... d+Chargers

 

[Giff]

Thought that might be the case.Maybe wiring the drill up to a car battery in a backpack maybe the answer. Anyone want a manual on reviving dead NCD 's. G :roll:

 

[MickCheese]

Only today I was using my Dewalt drill with a cheap after market battery when it burnt out the contacts.

I have rebuilt it into an old worn out Dewalt shell so hope I have retrieved the battery.

Will not be buying any after market batteries again.

Mick

 

[dickm]

Suspect that light useage over a longer period may be even worse for batteries than regular heavy use?

Does anyone know if the individual cells in a deWalt 18V battery are solderable? Have a couple of batteries with one or two duff cells, which given the price of whole batteries, might warrant cell replacement if it's feasible.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

There used to be a company that advertised in Ex. & Mart. that renewed them. I first stayed with my sister in Auckland about 15yrs ago, and my brother in law was a ships joiner - he knew where to go and what to look at. At that time their tool market was quite advanced, as the Japanese released their new power tools there 12 - 18mths before Europe got them - it was seen as a perfect trial market, a small relatively western population where every third man seemed to be a chippie or at least a builder of sorts. Their tools were half the price of ours as well.
Anyway, I digress. He told me then that no one bought new batteries - they went to a company that sawed the cases apart, replaced the cells and epoxied the cases back together. Apparently 90% of the cells, no matter what the price of the tool, came from only two suppliers.

 

[psm]

totaly flatten the batterys and try recharge

 

[mind_the_goat]

I tried stripping down 2 packs to make one good one, complete waste of time. Then I tried the trick with the high current supply to break the internal short circuits, worked for the first charge only.
I found this company on the web, who will replace the cells in your pack or sell you the cells for you to do yourself, easy if you have a soldering iron.
http://www.batteriesplus.co.uk/acatalog ... es_26.html

Then I found replacement packs on ebay for less than the price of the individual cells, sourced form China though and probably not very good quality.

I believe the problem with nicad packs, and maybe others, is that when one cell short circuits, many chargers will no longer detect full charge. This then overcharges the other cells if you leave the pack in the charger overnight (or for days). This then causes more shorted cells and more frequent recharges. By the time you realise the problem all the cells are useless and cannot be rejuvenated by any of the suggested methods.

One would hope that more expensive tools have good quality chargers that do more than just supply a fixed current, however I suspect that this is often an area where cost can be saved and the user is none the wiser till the tool no longer works.

The lessons I have learned:
Don't leave batteries on charge for to long
If your charger has charging indicators, make sure that they do go out after the expected charge period. If it stays on it's probably destroying the cells. for Nicads you may be able to use the 12V battery trick mentioned earlier (but wear safely goggles).
Measure the voltage after charging, a single nicad cell will measure about 1.3V fully charged, an 18V pack will measure just over 19V, if it measures less than 18V then it's likely you have at least one shorted cell, it may be possible to recover it if detected early.
If replacing cells yourself, replace them all, don't just change the 0V cells as others will short out and you likely destroy the new cells as well as the remaining old ones.
If you fully discharge your batteries before charging, don't leave them on discharge for long periods, if there are damaged cells it's quite possible that this will apply reverse polarity to some cells, causing further damage.

 

[dickm]

Thanks for that, Rob. Very useful info.