Black & Decker charger repair

[purple.acorn]

I have a Black & Decker PS160 charger - 12V. It stopped working, so I opened it up to have a look. There are only 2 resistors in these things. One of the two resistors has blown, probably because I left the unit plugged in for too long and ruined one of my batteries.

Black & Decker has not been able to help. The warranty is over, so they told me to buy a new one. They said they don't have records of what parts were used in the charger. I've looked high and low for someone who might have a schematic, but no luck.

Here's what I'm pleading for: I need someone who has the PS160 charger to look at the circuit board and tell me the colors of the bands on resistor R2 (there is a label visible under the resistor). It's the one right next to the LED. My resistor is burnt and I can't see the middle band(s) at all. It looks like one end is a brown band, and the other is likely blue but might be green. Can't be sure because of the damage.

As always, any help is greatly appreciated.

JC

[glenn P]

What does this resistor do? if it's a LED resistor, then the value isn't really critical. If you take & post photos of both sides of the CCT board, and buzz out the continuities, I might be able to help.

[Stormin Mormon]

Don't have such a charger -- but some other ideas. Might want to get a float charger from Harbor Freight, and wire that onto your specialized plug adaptor.

Second thought. Be sure it's a resistor, not a diode.

Third. Get a power supply plug from

and guess at charging times.

Fourth, pitch the drill in the scrap and buy another one from

; I have a 12 volt Drill Master, and really worth the $15 I paid for it, half price sale.

[jlhickle]

If you end up buying a charger, don't get a Black & Decker. The DeWalt DW9116 (DeWalt and Black & Decker are the same company) will charge your BD batteries and won't burn out if you plug in a bad battery.

[steve]

[do_not_spam_me]

If you bought the original with a credit card, it's possible the original warranty was extended by an extra year. Or can you buy a B&D tool that uses an identical charger and look at it?

If a resistor blew, I would expect the power transistor or triac associated with it to have blown as well. I hope it's a discrete part and not built into an IC.

[Val]

I have exactly the same problem with my ps160. The R2 resistor is not a led resistor, it's set between the diode bridge and the battery. Mine seems to be a 81ohm (grey brown black, gold). I will change it this afternoon and post if it worked...

[wangchiliusa]

I may be able to help. My PS 160 charger is busted too working only every once in a while and I took it apart. Don't know much about electronics but everything in mine looks okay. The bands on the resistor closest to the LED is from top to bottom Gray-Red-Gold-Gold. This appears to be slightly larger than the resistor next to it. If you want I can send you a closeup macro picture of the board. Private mail me at [e-mail] and I'll attach pic.

do_not_spam [e-mail] wrote:

[Jim Yanik]

[e-mail] wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I believe that's a 0.82 ohm resistor,probably a fusible one.

[Rich256]

Read colors in the opposite direction:

52 ohms 5% accuracy

[Rich256]

Those chargers usually don't use transistors or traics. Just a transformer, diode bridge and sometimes a dropping resistor.

[do_not_spam_me]

I admit I've never seen the inside of a B&D charger, only DeWalt and Ryobi units, but unless the battery pack contains some extra circuitry, which I doubt it does, being a budget brand, a fast charger built like that will be rough on the batteries.

[Rich256]

I also doubt that it could be called a fast charger. Most of them the transformer output is just enough to charge if left on long enough. Similar to those battery operated devices that tell you to charge for at least 10 hours before using.

A burned resistor I would guess could be due to a shorted cell in the battery pack. Important to measure the battery voltage before doing anything else. The pack has 10 cells. If the voltage doesn't get to near 12 volts or is below 10 a cell is probably shorted.

I just looked it up and see it is a 12 volt charger. Uses a wall plug transformer. And see others commenting that there is only two resistors and they have the same problem of one burning out.

[Southerner]

How do you get the charger apart? Do you have to cut it in the little trough that goes around near the bottom? I tried prying mine open with a flat blade screw driver but all it did was dig into the plastic without separating it.

[micky]

If they posted years ago, they're probably not reading now. What was the date on the posts.

I've never seen one, but if there is a label, try lifting up the label and you may find screws underneath.

[micky]

Only $14,18 on Amazon. Pretty bad reviews, but if you can't rig anything else to charege your drill's battieries, wortth it.

Souyld be able to use any other 12 volt charger, connect with wires with alligator clips on each end.

Better yet, fix your old one, which is what you wanted in the first place, but I happened to find this.

[Southerner]

I have no idea where this was posted. I found it at

that is where I answered it.

That may very well be but I see many posts concerning the PS160 and even if the original poster is no longer reading this others are.

No, there is no label. It is a typical formed wall wart with a groove about

1/4" from the bottom but I see no actual break in that groove and prying inside the groove does nothing to separate it so I was asking if I need to actually cut it inside of that groove to get it apart.

[KJ6EO]

Did you ever figure out what the correct value of R2 was in the PS160? I would expect it to be something like 10 ohms.

[rmotley]

replying to purple.acorn, rmotley wrote: Take a potentiometer rated pretty high such as a 5K ohm 2 watt. Solder a wire to the wipe and another wire to either end. Connect these wires to your ohm meter and adjust it for highest ohms. Now disconnect these wires from your ohm meter and solder them to the circuit board where the resistors leads were. (remove the resistor first). Connect your multimeter to the output of the power supply and set it to read DC volts. Plug in your power supply. Slowly turn the pot to decrease ohms until you start seeing volts rise on your multimeter. When the volts reach the level the power supply was intended to output stop. Disconnect the setup and read the ohms value on the potentiometer . This is the value the resistor needs to be. I did this with R7 in the wall wart.

[Israel]

replying to rmotley, Israel wrote: I opened my PS160 charger which stopped working due to a failed transformer. The circuit board was intact, the value of the R2 resistor is 8.2 ohm. Hope it helps.