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14.4

gar2191

Active member
Joined
Jun 2, 2015
Messages
36
my 18 volt Makita drill driver says 14.4 on the tag next to the serial no. Whats the story??
Its a part of a compact combo...
 
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R. Johnson

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 19, 2015
Messages
78
Location
CT
18V is the absolute max, unloaded battery voltage for marketing purposes. 14.4 is the nominal voltage. That is based on most companies using 3.7V as the nominal voltage for a single cell lithium battery.
 

iScream

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 8, 2014
Messages
777
Location
Middle TN
Here's my somewhat educated guess. LiPo cells are normally stored at 3.6 or 3.7 volts. So, a LiPo battery pack with 4 cells in series at 3.6 volts each gives you 14.4 volts.

LiPo cells are normally charged to about 4.2 volts. So 4 cells in series at 4.2 volts will give you 16.8 volts. It's possible that Makita is charging to a slightly higher voltage per cell but I doubt it since they want the battery to last.

Assuming your Makita is lithium my guess is that they are generously rounding up the full charge voltage.

If your kit has an older NiCad battery, 14.4 volts is 12 NiCad cells at 1.2 volts each in series. If you charge a 12 cell NiCad battery to 1.5 volts per cell, that gives you 18 volts for the entire pack.

Chris
 

iScream

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 8, 2014
Messages
777
Location
Middle TN
Oh, my first modem was 300 baud. A friend and I use to run a small BBS on a 286 based PC back when the 386 was state of the art. That was before most people had even heard of the internet and "desktop" computers had horizontal cases that really did sit on top of your desk.

We only had a single phone line hooked up but I remember being thrilled when we would hear someone connecting to play Red Dragon or one of the other cheesy ASCII games for DOS.

Yes, I'm a nerd.

Chris
 
Last edited:

Major Ramifications

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 28, 2005
Messages
4,673
Location
River Ridge, Louisiana
Would you guys please shut up about your bauds? This is a thread about tools. Some of us ignoramuses don't know what a baud is. And we don't know how to spell ignoramus, but we may have gotten lucky.
 

PBCampbell

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 2, 2009
Messages
871
Location
WV
Lol, you're response seems a bit rude. I'd imagine people where just having some fun in light of the OP not providing much useful info.
I can only guess that he purchased 14.4 volt tools when he intended to buy 18 volt.
 
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