Like printer cartridges where replacement a couple of times can can cost as much as a new printer! Replacement battery packs for cordless tools cost almost as much/more than a new tool!
Have accumulated and been given several cordless drills with worn out batteries, and even if one has newer cordless tools the batteries even of the same manufacture don't fit. We must have five (at least) different style battery packs!
We have rebuilt (maybe re-celling is the right term, but it's lot of work repacking and then connecting together the new cells within each battery pack) a couple of Bosch drill batteries because we liked the drill, but then the charger into which only that battery pack will fit, failed and a new charger is around $70!
So of course we got another, cheaper, cordless drill and it with it's particular style of battery pack and charger works well enough for a do-it-yourself-er; and we have other, older, 115 and 230 volt drills anyway. One of them a Wolf drill bought in 1953 for really heavy work!
But thinking of a couple of strategies to make use of the drills, which given batteries still work; still have working key-less chucks etc.
1) Rig up an external connection from other chargers of the right voltage etc.2) Use a completely external power supplies from the AC supply to power each drill (sans batteries although they'd probably be retained in place for proper balance and use these drills on various work benches (we have 3 benches in various locations) and retain the cordless and 'regular' plug in drills for other work.
With bench work it's sometimes useful to have a second drill at hand to avoid frequent swapping of bits etc. There is also, as the amount of salvaged and saved 'junk' in my basement attests, a wish to not just throw away somethings that still work! It's called recycling these days AIUI?
BTW an ancillary question.
3) How does one remove a key-less chuck from a drill? Cos could put one on an older corded drill that has a too-small chuck which is also getting a bit 'past it' and doesn't tighten well even with the correct chuck-key.Comments advice, rants, criticism welcomed.