:On Apr 22, 9:41 am, Dan_Musicant wrote: :> I have a couple of cordless drills I bought a bit over 5 years ago, a :> Dewalt 9.6v and a Panasonic 12v. They both came with two NiCD batteries :> and I've been using them lightly and the batteries (it seems to me) are :> not holding much of a charge. Very often, when I reach for one, the :> battery is on the verge of dieing. Every time that happens I fetch the :> alternate battery and put the dieing one in the charger and that battery :> (again, it seems to me) charges too quickly! It's just my feeling that :> the "charged" signal goes on on the charger too quickly. :>
:> I know that some battery chargers feature a reconditioning feature, but :> of course my cordless drill chargers have nothing of the sort. I'm :> thinking I can go through several cycles and recondition these :> batteries. For instance, put the drills on Low and rubber bands around :> the trigger and let the motors run until I can hear the battery's losing :> power and then let the battery sit 5-10 minutes (maybe not necessary, it :> really doesn't seem hot), and then charge. I figure if I do this 4 times :> or so for each battery, it may well restore most of the capacity. Has :> anyone tried something like this? :>
:> Dan : :Your batteries are shot, you'll never get the capacity that you once :had. :The name of the game with cordless tools is to "use 'em or lose 'em." :I've had 18 volt Milwaukee batteries last over 10 years with almost :daily use, maintained per manufacturer's instruction's. Let them sit :unused for a couple of months and any brand battery will be ready for :the trash. If you do not use cordless tools a lot, try drilling some :holes in a 2 x 4 with a paddle bit once a week to drain the battery, :then after it cools off 10 minutes or so, recharge it. That way it :will always be ready to go and the batteries will last much :longer.........or, like I said, use it more often.
Well, I've been having good success reconditioning some old NiCD batteries using my La Crosse AA and AAA charger, so I figure that using the same technique with my cordless batteries I may be able to restore them as well. It's different, in that the cordless batteries are really several batteries, presumably connected in series. I don't think the La Crosse charger is doing anything fancy. It's just charging, then discharging, then charging again, then discharging, etc. until the measured capacity of the battery (determined during the discharge cycle) is no longer increasing and then it terminates the process. I can do this sort of thing manually -- i.e. run the cordless down until it's losing power, charge, and do it over and over until the measured time it takes to charge and/or discharge is no longer increasing. Perhaps I can restore a large part of the lost capacity of the batteries doing this. I figure it's worth a try. Anyway, I'm not yet seriously inconvenienced by the loss of capacity of the drills because I have a 2nd battery for each one. I figure if my technique works, using it occasionally (every year or two) will go a long way to maximizing the overall battery life. I hear that buying replacement batteries for these is pretty expensive (they stick it to you).