Drill battery recell

[Mathew Newton]

After many years sterling service the battery in my Bosch cordless drill fi nally gave up the ghost. I couldn't bring myself to chuck the otherwise per fectly-working drill away, but nor could I bring myself to spending £50-o dd on a replacement battery given I've got other drills available...

However, it was still a handy drill to have around so based on previous dis cussions here I thought I'd try recelling it. Looking around I found a Chin ese seller on eBay that could do 20 x 4/5 Sub C cells (it's a 24v battery) for £20 all-in so I decided to give it a go.

Whilst it was a little tricky arranging the cells to fit the desired geomet ric shape whilst accommodating the pre-attached positioning of the solder t ags - those 3D puzzles played with as a child paid off! - it wasn't actuall y as hard as I thought!

Here's the end result:

I must confess; there was a feeling of relief, and indeed surprise, when I connected it up and measured the voltage across it and found it worked! Eve n more so when it worked in the drill! ;-)

Anyway, I thought I'd post this as a 'success story' in case others are con sidering doing likewise.

Mathew

P.S. I also got to try out my soldering iron since fitting a silicone mains cable to it - the extra flexibility (and length which I took the opportuni ty of extending whilst I was at it) was such a boon. It was the next best t hing to is being cordless!

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

discussions here I thought I'd try recelling it. Looking around I found a Chinese seller on eBay that could do 20 x 4/5 Sub C cells (it's a 24v battery) for £20 all-in so I decided to give it a go.

shape whilst accommodating the pre-attached positioning of the solder tags - those 3D puzzles played with as a child paid off! - it wasn't actually as hard as I thought!

Well done, that man. I've been thinking of this, too. Looking at the prices of some of the HK batteries it makes some sense but only if the quality is ok.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Good luck with cells at a quid each. Think you'll find the capacity poor, and the max current they can deliver useless.

[John]

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My experiences with cheap laptop and PDA batteries from Hong Kong is in line with this. OK when new, but life to final expiry has been only a few months.

rusty

[Dave Plowman (News)]

No experience of those, but I did buy some admittedly ridiculously cheap Sub C tagged Ni-Cad cells from China and they were totally useless. To be fair, they didn't state they were suitable for power tool use. However, they did claim to be 2800 mA.hr. Which they simply weren't even at a low discharge rate. I made it 800 mA.hr. One giveaway was they were a lot lighter than the old cells,

[Mathew Newton]

Ah, okay. For once I was hoping there would have been plenty of markup with the more expensive complete batteries, or even individual cells, here in the UK and that buying direct from China would've merely been cutting out the middle man.

I'll see how things go. It was a rewarding exercise nevertheless and perhaps I'll strike lucky in this case.

Mathew (ever the optimist!)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

If the drill seems to have plenty power, you might be ok. With mine you could stall it so easily as to be near useless.

The markup on decent cells is obviously quite high - compared to the price a drill maker pays by the million. Economy of scale.