Rebuilding battery packs (cordless tools)

[uart]

I've got an "off brand" cordless driver/drill that's given me pretty good service and is still in great condition except that both battery packs (14.4V NiCd) are now knackered.

Has anyone had much success with getting NiCd battery packs (for cordless tools) rebuilt. Either paying to get them rebuilt or doing it themselves? Just interested in the prices and how successfully (or otherwise) it turned out.

BTW. Personally I would have bought a better know brand, in which case I'd probably be able to buy spares, but my wife bought me this "worx" thing one time for a birthday present.

 

[hdossett]

Most likely it has Sub-c batteries in in. Take it apart to check out the exact size. Then do a search on Sub-c NiCd. Lots of different prices. Get the highest MaH, that runs form 1300 to 3600 mAH. Higher is better, last longer on a charge! Some have tabs for soldering, some don't. You would need at least one tab. Join them all "+ to -", and you should be good to go. Your charger is for NiCd, so do not replace them with NMH even though they may be better batteries! I thought about rebuilding an old 6V drill, but didn't.

Good luck,
H

 

[Hootbro]

http://www.voltmanbatteries.com/servlet/StoreFront

 

[hydramatic]

simmons battery here in montgomery, al rebuilds them..has the spot welder to join them..he`s done our 14.4 and 18 v snap on batt, packs. no complaints

 

[chadster1]

See if there is a Batteries Plus near you. They can rebuild them for you.

 

[crewchief888]

the last 14.4v pack i rebuilt, i bought a ryobi 14.4 pack at HD, took it apart and reconfigured it to fit the housing i had.

then i find out that the batteries are fine, my charger dont work..

 

[uart]

Yep they're sub-c's. Last time I looked at local prices for replacement cells to fix a pack myself the retail prices here (Australia) were freakin' ridiculous, like $90 for 12 batteries when I can buy a new drill for less.

Thank god for ebay and online shopping. I just checked and it looks like I can get them in lots of 12 from as cheap as about $1.50 to $1.80 per unit! (shipped). The ones I looked at have nice long solder tags, so it should be a pretty easily rebuild. I'm definitely going to give this a go.

One question though. I can get 2200 mA-hr Ni-Cd's the cheapest, but in NiMH I can get 6000 mA-hr for not all that much more. Do you think there would be any great problem if I use the higher capacity NiMH cells in a drill (and charger) originally designed for NiCd?

 

[thedeatons]

Shouldn't... I have run lots of different batteries in rc cars. The car or drill just cares about dc voltage, not where the voltage originates from. Just know that different types of batteries require different chargers. The best batteries for rc are the li-po a123 batteries because the voltage stays the same throughout the charge, and ya need less of them to equal the same voltage (lighter weight).

My local interstate battery store rebuilds battery packs also.

 

[uart]

Yes the voltage is the same for NiMH or NiCd, I was just wondering if the HiMH can handle high current pulses as well as NiCd.

As for the charger, it's a pretty simple one hour thing that charges at about 2 amps. It might cut out early on the higher capacity cells but I could always give them a second round of charging if need be.

 

[OldMan_NM]

I bought a HF 18 volt NiCad pack on sale (~$14 ?) and reconfigured it to fit my 18 volt Cman cordless drill. Works ok but I am not sure I would do it again.

 

[uart]

Works ok but I am not sure I would do it again.

Was it just too time consuming to do, or was it a poor result?

 

[OldMan_NM]

Time consuming (but I work slow) and I lack a small spot welder for good stainless steel battery connections. I used a Dremel stone to roughen/clean the terminals (for soldering) and got passable results.

 

[uart]

Time consuming (but I work slow) and I lack a small spot welder for good stainless steel battery connections. I used a Dremel stone to roughen/clean the terminals (for soldering) and got passable results.

Ok, it looks like adapting a foreign pack like that would be more work than just rebuilding one with all new cells. I was looking at doing the same thing, or even just identifying and replacing bad cells, but yeah the small tabs on the OEM cells look like they'd be hell to solder onto, and I don't have the spot welding capabilities.

Just replacing the whole internals with all new "tabbed" ones like THESE (for example) looks like it would be a piece of cake to do.