converting cordless drills to corded

a bridge rectifier and transformer may fit into the old battery pack, along with a circuit board and a few electrolytic caps and a voltage regulator, shouldn't be hard. Pick up a circuit diagram at Radio Shack along with all the parts.

Have you seen the prices on 9v cordless drills recently?

You would need a converted to step down the 110v AC to 9.6v DC and adapter that to run the drill

John

Hum...that's odd... I seem to recall this coming up either here or on the metalworking newsgroup just recently.

This certainly can be true.

In short...no. While battery powered drills are great things, they have rather less power than most tailed tools. Losing the portability factor does NOT make it a better tool. Now..there are a few different ways to make it useful. 1) Drop some serious bucks on a 10V wallwart, and, after pulling the guts out of one of the defunct battery packs, attach the power supply to it, to adapt it to the drill, and, use the drill as a corded unit. It will probably have to produce a couple of amps or more, so will not be cheap...or light. 2) Take the battery packs to Batteries, Etc and have them rebuilt. That will likely be much cheaper than replacing, and will not lose you the strength of these tools - their portability. 3) Cut the battery packs apart and, replace the cells in them yourself. Probably the cheapest way, although the more labor intensive. 4) Bundle it up, take some pictures, sell it on Ebay and buy a new, 18V unit that will twist your arm off. I suspect if you put words like "Unique", "special", "collector's special" and that sort of thing, you likely will find someone to pay more than retail for it (he said, bitterly, having been outbid a number of times recently) Regards Dave Mundt

Put a cigarette lighter plug on it and use it in your car/boat.

Radio Shack sells power supplies that produce different voltages, some are variable. Find one that will produce the correct voltage. You may get lucky and have the power supply fit inside an old battery casing.

I don't think I would go to the effort thought.

Frank

"Robert Graham" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

It will be tough. It may only take 9.6 VDC but the motor will draw lots of amps. I would not be surprized if peaks of 10 amps are common. Those little power suplies just won't handle it.

I though I saw a place that stuffed switch mode power supplies into old battery packs. Certainly get plenty of power this way.

-Bruce

if you can find it again I'd sure be interested...

Here is one for a Dewalt. I DAGS with "cordless drill ac converter" so you might try it as well to find something that will work for you.

-Bruce

That will make it turn but little more. These supplies can not deliver the amperage to produce any power. If it's a good supply, it will shut down. If a cheap one, it will burn up.

Gee if you're in the 'states' , goto your local Harbour Freight and buy their 9.6 volt battery packs for $9.00 !

details...

ITEM 45943-0VGA ...

OK, you'll have to cutoff the case,resolder the batteries, but man what a nice,easy solution !

I'm surprised they're not on sale(usually they are $4.99 )!!!

I wouldn't mind 4 or 5 sets to replace my 'dead' Makita and Craftsman drills.

It really costs MORE for 'official' battery packs than NEW drills.......

Jay in Greensville,Ont

I bought some of these to refurbish my dying 9.6 Makita packs. Install was easy enough but they died after only a couple of charges. I'm guessing they are not compatible with the Makita charger and I'll have to use a wall-wart style trickle (24 hour) type charger.

-Bruce

Use a trebuchet. A few good hurlings of the cordless drill, then you will obviously have to go and buy a corded one, no questions asked.

Converting one into the other just isn't sensible.

The other option is to get another drill with the same battery pack. They usually come with 2 so you can use both at the same time or one while the spare is charging. My wife and I have his and hers Makitas. That is sometimes handy when you are drilling and driving screws.

I've been thinking about doing this too since I have 4 cordless drills that wont hold a charge. My plan is to buy a cheap switching PC supply and attach it to my workbench and use the 12v supply to power the drill(s). These supplies can be picked up pretty cheap (a 500 watt supply on pricewatch.com is $13 delivered) and can handle 10+ amps on the 12 volt supply so I think it will handle it Ok. It won't be portable but all I really want is to be able to use these drills on my workbench (I have other corded and cordless drills for mobil usage). If I end up doing this, I'll let you know how it worked...

Lance