Possible to covert cordeless tool to corded?

[SVB]

Folks I have an old 14.4 V NiCd Ryobi angle drill.

I only really use it for sanding on the lathe.

The batteries have long since packed up as it’s quite an old tool. is it possible to buy a cheap and cheerful power supply of some sort that would allow me to use it as a corded tool if I effectively connected it direct to the output of the transformer.

I can find various transformers of approx voltage but I’m not sure the power (watts) reqd, ie the current performance I’m looking for.
Any electrical engineers in our number?

thanks

 

[Paul Hannaby]

Anything is possible but you would need a high current supply to get the power needed at that voltage and they tend to be expensive. Another (probably cheaper) option would be to replace the cells in the battery pack if you can take it apart.

 

[Ollie78]

Makita sell a mains power thingy with a battery connection end. I guess its just an ac/dc converter thing so it must be possible.
You might be better trying to find a replacement battery on ebay. I get the fake Makita ones, so far only one has melted! They sent me another for free though.
The power requirements are probably stamped on there somewhere.

Ollie

 

[Jameshow]

Remove the battery cells, drill hole through the
battery body, thread through a twin wire and knot solder to terminals and reassemble.

Attach the other end to a basic 12v battery charger or a cigarette socket.

I'm might have a go myself!

Cheers James

 

[Sideways]

I believe that Nicad batteries for power tools are capable of delivering high currents under load. One of the things they are good at. Even if you had a 10 minute high power fast charger for this drill, I'd hazard that the tool could pull substantially more current that the charger could deliver. Consumer grade car battery chargers are usually rather feeble things/ I'd be concerned about overloading and damaging the charger.

 

[Richard_C]

The battery charger idea is worth a go, but it needs to be an old simple 12v charger. Modern ones have all sorts gubbins to protect your car battery and circuits, and won't even start up inless they sense a voltage. Or see if you can run it off an old 12v car battery if you have one kicking about. Typically they become useless for cars if they won't hold up to over 11v under load, but can be used for other things.

Do you have any other battery tools? I changed over to Bosch from Ryobi about 6 years ago when the NiCd s died. I had one rarely used tool so took a battery pack apart, soldered in wires, shoved and glued the 'stalk up the hole' leaving the black cover off. I can now hold a Bosch battery in place with a band of velcro tape with spade connectors pushed in the slots.

 

[okeydokey]

If you still have the Ryobi charger buy a cheapo battery off the web. Will hold a charge more than sufficient for that light load

 

[baldkev]

Makita sell a mains power thingy with a battery connection end. I guess its just an ac/dc converter thing so it must be possible.

Hi ollie, ive seen one that connects to another battery bank, but not mains.....

 

[Superduner]

Look at "The Post Apocolyptic Inventor" on YouTube. He does this all the time and includes links to all the bits needed.

 

[xy mosian]

I thought that I could run a Makita 9.6V battery drill from an oldish car battery charger. I killed it, the charger.
Fortunately I had a charged battery. On test the drill pulled in excess of 10A on no load start up. That brief 'heavy' load killed the battery charger.
Better look for a suitable mains power supply me thinks.
On the other hand the earliest battery drills I recall were by Black and Decker. The advert showed the drill being powered by a car battery.
As had been said on an earlier thread, perhaps a battery charger powering a car battery, the battery acting as a buffer, in turn connected to the drill, would work well.
geoff

 

[quintain]

Hi SVB
I had a load of excellent help from this forum on the same question, which can be seen at: (Power supply is 240v to 15 v with 5a.
https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/thread...-drills-to-mains-elec-uk.133578/#post-1519158).
I have converted 3 x old battery drills using an old laptop power supply 240v to 15 v with 5a.
The one power adapter powers all 3 old drills as I will only be using one at a time.
My drills are under-powered but are v successful for my bench use, No 1 has a screwdriver bit, 2 x others have small and smaller dia drill bits in them.
I am reasonably happy for them to hang under my bench and be immediately to hand for when they are needed.

 

[WoodMangler]

I'd be wary of applying mains voltage anywhere near a tool designed for batteries.

 

[Lazurus]

Seems a lot of faffage when a new cheap drill is so easily available

 

[Adam Pinson]

Remove the battery cells, drill hole through the
battery body, thread through a twin wire and knot solder to terminals and reassemble.

Attach the other end to a basic 12v battery charger or a cigarette socket.

I'm might have a go myself!

Cheers James

I've tried this, it doesn't work unfortunately

 

[Dabop]

There's some things that tend to cause issues- battery chargers 'usually' won't work unless they are either very old, or very, very cheap- as practically every modern charger has 'reverse polarity protection' and if it has, then it won't act as a power supply without internal 'butchery'...

The other issue with the few that do is that most have no internal filtering, in fact many are raw half wave rectified, and if your tool has any form of 'speed control' ie it doesn't have a simple on/off trigger, but variable speed then the pulsating raw DC isn't 'healthy' for it- at best it may randomly change speeds or even lock on, but it more than likely will cause damage...

If its a 12 or 14.4v tool, then a modified old computer power supply will usually work (there are dozens of 'how to's online on how to do this, such as Convert a Computer Power Supply to a Variable Bench Top Lab Power Supply

I made up an adapter from a dead battery pack and a high current switchmode PSU I had from an industrial switchboard from the mines, which was a 24v, but like most of these, have a trimpot that can be wound down to 18-20v in my case its a 14A, which is a little light on for the bigger tools, but runs my smaller dewalt stuff quite well but you can get ones with a much higher rating up into the multiple tens of amps...- look for something like this (the bigger ones have a fan in them often)- and you want one with that trimmer pot (here on the right, but it can be anywhere- some even through a hole in the case on the side- just adjust it to the voltage your tool needs- 24v ones will go down to about 15-16v usually, 12v ones up to the same or a touch higher16-17v...