Cordless Drills & Battery Conditioning

[Steve Wardley]

Hi all.
Has anyone recently purchased a cordless drill where the battery charger has a battery conditioning facility ?

If like me you are just a hobby/diy user of cordless tools you eventually end up with perfectly good tools with knackered batteries due to periods of storage or inactivity and as with my Bosch battery packs, they contain NiCad batteries and are all goosed.
I am in communications with a Derbyshire company that specialise in refurbing battery packs but as I explained to them in my e-mail, there's no point in just replacing with more NiCads just for them to suffer the same fate and unless I can have them re-celled with more modern technology and still charge them with my original charger, then the whole lot,(3 drills, 3 batteries and the charger) might as well go in the re-cycling and start again with newer technology.

 

[Rorschach]

You can upgrade to lithium which is vastly superior but whether that is economically viable is another matter. Are there lithium to NiCd adaptors available for your kit? If so you could buy new batteries/charger but keep the tools. If you only have 3 tools though, probably better to just buy new. You will likely get some money back selling the tools on ebay as there is always someone who will be able to use them.

 

[porker]

Unless you stick with NiCads you will need a new charger anyway. Apart from the physical connection the charging methods are different and won't work. It is annoying, but to be honest it would be easier flogging the bare tools as suggested above and investing in Lithium stuff. IMO it is much better anyway. The tools have come a long way in last 15 years.

 

[xy mosian]

This is my tale, relevant or not I'll leave to you.
My wife bought me a NiCad powered toothbrush. This I used until the battery was flat, not nearly flat but flat. Then I recharged it. This cycle went on for seventeen years, yes seventeen years, used daily. That's impressive.
Now I have a couple of thirty five year old Makita battery drill/drivers. A handful of duff batteries and one which still holds a charge, albeit briefly. These days I need the battery drill rarely but at short notice. I bought a LiOn powered drill, used it infrequently and had the battery fail a fortnight after the end of the guarantee. Now I have objections to buying things just to keep commerce going, important as that is. My thoughts turned to the Makitas, should I buy replacement NiCads, cheaper etc.? Of course with infrequent use Nicads gradually fade and die don't they?
Ok! Mix the toothbrush and drill, use the Makita, discharge the battery and recharge, 1 hr, as required. After all 1 hr is a good cup of tea these days, or lunch perhaps. How to discharge the Makita battery, I can't hold the trigger on the drill for a couple of hours, anyway it's noisey. The answer a Torch, but they are pricey and not thick on the ground. Fortunately I have an old charger and so I coupled up a couple of bulbs to draw the same current as the Makita torch and discharge the battery when finished.
Ask me in seventeen years if it worked. You may need a medium.
By the way, the Makita battery that only briefly held a charge, now powers the light bulbs for longer than it did.

xy.

 

[Steve Wardley]

Cheers guy's
As said earlier, I understand that LiPo or NiMh batteries need their own charger so it's looking increasingly like flogging the drills and starting afresh might be the way to go. I too had a toothbrush that lasted for years and was only ditched when the rubber handle turned all snotty, don't know what that was all about.
I'll see what the return e-mail from Derbyshire advises.

 

[TheUnicorn]

if it was me I'd look into recelling myself (replacing nicad inner for li-ion), doing a bit of research and making sure there was the correct battery management circuitary, I imagine the easiest way to charge them would be via usb. Check out instructables.com for help on that front.

 

[Sideways]

For what it's worth, and based on an academic research paper I once read, fully charging a Lithium battery before putting it into storage isn't a good way to maximise the life of the pack.
Charge halfway to 2/3 full by guesstimating a part charge is a practical way to increase the life by a substantial amount. Like +50% more "full" charge discharge cycles.
My packs will probably die of old age before they wear out but I see no harm in trying to follow this advice so I'm giving it a go.

I thought (maybe wrongly) that nicads were pretty tolerant of sitting empty. I have a (20+ year) old pack that charges and gets used once in a while. It self discharges and is flat in a few days but nicads were always bad for that. It's fits a metabo cordless drill driver with their "impulse" mode that is a real get out of jail feature for some difficult jobs.

 

[TheTiddles]

There are lots of ways to make batteries last longer, ad hoc use and long storage periods are not usually amongst the methods.

However, you will probably consume more of your life trying to revive old technology than if you just went and bought something modern. There’s a reason most things don’t use NiCads now

Aidan

 

[Phil Russell]

I had a Ryobi +1 system using NiCads. Fine to begin with but then batteries would not hold charge for infrequent use. I replaced batteries ... same story. In the end I decided to go Lithium route .. bought batteries and charger from 'that site' and away I went. Such a difference. Charge is kept for a very long time.
Cheers, Phil

 

[Robbo60]

Never knew Nicads didn't like not getting used. I have 2 Dewalt cordless hammer drills of similar age (about 15 years) One at my holiday home which both batteries have died and one here which both are fine. I have taken one of the good ones out to HH, but sounds like that wasn't a good idea. If we are ever allowed to fly again I'll bring it back and buy new lithium out there. Thanks

 

[pe2dave]

Strip one of the batteries down, find out the cell id and replace them.
Bought on ebay, bit of soldering and the drill works fine.

 

[gmgmgm]

For tools, Nicad batteries have been almost totally replaced by Li-Ion. As Rorschach says, you can usually get adapters which allow you to fit almost any modern Li-Ion battery to your old tools - check ebay to see the various options.

No need to replace your tools, just the batteries and charger.

I believe Nicad still has /some/ advantages- they are much tougher than Li-Ion, so Antarctic research sites still use them etc. But for UK work, lithium is much better.

 

[Limey Lurker]

> This is my tale, relevant or not I'll leave to you.

> I bought a LiOn powered drill, used it infrequently and had the battery fail a fortnight after the end of the guarantee.

All the Li-on powered tools that I and my Electrical-contrator son have come into contact with have relied on the 18650 Li-on cell, in various arrangements to supply different Voltages and Ampereages. It is no more difficult to re-cell a Li-on battery, than a Ni-mh battery.

 

[Spectric]

NiCads are old technology and you had to discharge before recharging because they had what was termed the memory effect. They were a lot safer to use though wheras Li-Ion are very temperature sensitve and the charger has to monitor the temperature during charging, some dubious cheap chargers don't have this feature and is why these batteries have caught fire.

 

[TheUnicorn]

All the Li-on powered tools that I and my Electrical-contrator son have come into contact with have relied on the 18650 Li-on cell, in various arrangements to supply different Voltages and Ampereages. It is no more difficult to re-cell a Li-on battery, than a Ni-mh battery.

Yes, the 18650 cell is absolutely everywhere, from tools to laptops, to usb powerbanks, so they can be quite easy to salvage, could cost you next to nothing. Word of caution, the 18650 purely tells you the dimensions of the cell, nothing about capacity, voltage, chemistry, (the last two are fairly consistant but not 100%) also a lot of the cheaper brands list one capacity but are no where near it.

 

[MorrisWoodman12]

........... There’s a reason most things don’t use NiCads now

Aidan

Cadmium is a heavy metal so difficult to dispose safely hence the move away from NiCAD batteries and cadmium passivation plating etc. NiCAD batteries are easier to charge and more forgiving when overcharged but are less energy efficient and self discharge more quickly than NiMH and Lithium. NiMH is slightly more difficult to charge than NiCAD but easier than Lithium. The latter can explode if not treated correctly and usually has probes built into the battery pack to abort charging if it gets too hot.

 

[TheTiddles]

Cadmium is a heavy metal so difficult to dispose safely hence the move away from NiCAD batteries and cadmium passivation plating etc. NiCAD batteries are easier to charge and more forgiving when overcharged but are less energy efficient and self discharge more quickly than NiMH and Lithium. NiMH is slightly more difficult to charge than NiCAD but easier than Lithium. The latter can explode if not treated correctly and usually has probes built into the battery pack to abort charging if it gets too hot.

Yep, those would be some of them!

 

[xy mosian]

I am learning a lot from this thread, and I'll certainly look at replacing my NiCad bettery packs with Li-on. Perhaps recelling the Li-on battery packs as well.
xy

 

[Fergie 307]

I am learning a lot from this thread, and I'll certainly look at replacing my NiCad bettery packs with Li-on. Perhaps recelling the Li-on battery packs as well.
xy

absolutely agree that replacing the cells with more modern ones is the ideal answer, but expensive. You can often rejuvenate ni cads using car batteries, loads of videos on you tube how to do this. I have used this technique and it does work. They don't come back as new, but certainly can get a lot more useful life out of them.

 

[sneggysteve]

I have e bike and picked up this company on a cycle forum and the company is very well recomended for re-cells of bike batteries.

https://ebikebatteries.co.uk
I asked them if they did power tool batteries - their reply may bo of interest to some?


Hi Steve,

Thank you for your email. We do from time to time, but we specialise in ebike batteries. The problem with tool batteries is that oftentimes the case is sonic welded (rather than held together with good old fashioned screws) and not designed to be opened. When you do open them, you can compromise the structural integrity of the case so it can't ever be sealed properly.

That being said, I have no issues at the very least taking a look at tool batteries if someone wants them re-celled.