New Life for Cordless Drills

I have some old cordless drills (and tools) that are a pain in the ass to get batteries for, the batteries won't hold a charge, etc. What I did is to attach a pair of (homemade, small) jumper cables from a voltage source to my cordless drill. So, with like a 6 volt or 9 volt cordless drill, I jump power to it directly from a battery charger (set on 12 volts). It spins that drill like a top, plenty of power and plenty of torque.

If you got an old cordless drill your going to pitch in the trash, expose the electrodes on it and slap a power source to it --if nothing else take a 6 volt lantern battery and jump some power to the drill. Cut up an extension cord and put alligator clips on both ends of the cords. Jump the voltage from the battery to the drill. If it dont go, then reverse the wires. If that works, now get your battery charger and apply the voltage from that to the drill. Of course, when you are done (playing for each session), unplug the charger from the wall. Have fun and get more mileage out of old cordless tools.

Reply to
MilkyWhy
Loading thread data ...

Good idea. Of course, that's one of the reaosns I don't buy cordless tools.... ;0

-- Regards,

Bentley Wolfe Senior Support Engineer, Macromedia Flash Senior Escalation Engineer

Owner, BIKETRIAL MIDWEST Webmaster:

formatting link
formatting link
formatting link

Reply to
bentley wolfe

That sounds like a LOT of trouble. You might as well just buy some cheap (e.g.: Harbor Freight) AC powered tools.

Many battery packs can be "fixed" by specialty shops which open up the plastic case, take out the old NiCads and put in new ones. It's seems like every maker has his own battery pack but the actual internal rechargeable cells are fairly standard.

Reply to
John Gilmer

You can take apart the battery case and buy new 'raw' NiCd cells from most electonics distributors and rebuild the battery systems yourself. I did this with a cordless phone recently and am considering it for some power tools.

-- Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION ? FILM SCANNING ? DVD MASTERING ? AUDIO RESTORATION Hear my Kurzweil Creations at:

formatting link
sites at:
formatting link
formatting link
formatting link

-
Reply to
Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

This is Turtle.

Your thoughts are very good at extending the life of the Cordless tools but then you make a mobile cordless tool into a corded tool and if you did not mine the cord being on it in the first place. Just buy Corded tools which last atleast 2 or 3 time longer.

TURTLE

Reply to
TURTLE

To each his own, I guess, but I think the convenience of having a cordless drill far outweighs the downside. I have a few dozen screwdrivers, but I scarcely use them anymore. Once you remove the need for outlets and extension cords, driving screws by hand really seems tedious.

I bought my first cordless drill 6 years ago for about $100. The batteries just died this year. I found a set of two new batteries for about $50. I'd have hated to throw out the drill, but even buying an entirely new one would have been worth the 5+ years of convenience I bought for $100.

I don't often see pro contractors using cordless stuff (although they do ask to borrow mine "for a few minutes"), which makes sense, as they tend to work continuously for many hours at a time in the same area. A corded screwgun is probably better suited to that kind of work. But for the homeowner/weekend handyman like me, it's a big slice of heaven to be able to grab a cordless and go right to work.

I now have two cordless drills. When I have a bigger task that involves drilling as well as driving screws, I take them both out: A truly lovely experience.

Greg Guarino

Reply to
Greg G

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.