Replacement batteries

Lithium ?

For many years I avoided battery-hand-tools because of my experience with the early NiCads. I love the newer ones with Lithium batteries. I must confess that I didn't know they used Ni-MH .. except the AA AAA in cameras & similar. John T.

Yeah, NMH batteries filled the gap between NiCD and Li in power tools for a couple of years. NMH have some advantages over NiCd (primarily toxicity - NMH are environmentally friendly) but a lot of the same drawbacks. They are mostly interchangeable, with perhaps minor charger tweaks. Li killed them, though we're back to the landfill problem.

The Hitachi came with Nicads, the higher amp hour was the temptation though. Lithium are nice but would need to buy a whole new drill, as ai already have 3 (2 dewalts) not going to fix what is not broke.

Have a local battery supplier that take any batteries for recycling, including non rechargable ones.

HD, and I think Lowes, take them too. I have a pile of both kinds to recycle.

Dewalt has an adapter that allows their Li batteries to be used in older tools. Batteries are still expensive. I've found that just before Black Friday, Lowes has a sale on Bosch, and perhaps others. I bought a drill and impact driver, with batteries and charger for the price of the two batteries. I didn't need the tools but why not?

I went the NiMH -> lithium ion route for a hand vacuum $60 for replacement NiMH cells to build a pack (too old for a battery pack to be available) but I had a new, DOA lithium ion laptop battery. The NiMH was 1.8AH. The 3s2p lithium pack was 3+AH. Spent a few $ for a BMS and wired it all up. Other than needing a bigger BMS for the startup surge ($10, on order) it works and the greater AH means all 15 of the steps and their carpet can be vacuumed - and the vacuum's motor hasn't slowed down. The 11.1 volts of 3 lithoum ion cells in series is very close to the 10.8 volts of 9 NiMH in series and the original charger worked just fine. Lots of power tool batteries available "dead" - which is usally one bad cell. Places like batteryhookup.com sell them by the pound. I picked up 5 "don't hold a charge" 12 volt NiMh drills on the Free section of Craig's List and I'll do that type of update for all of them - using some nice cells from "40 volt" Ryobi tool batteries (purchased by the pound). Might just leave a drill/driver in the equipment shed with a small solar panel to keep it charged (the LED lighting out there is solar-powered) and maybe one in the truck and one in the garage ;-)

Wow you did avoid battery hand tools! My first electric screwdriver was about 40 years ago.

I really don't use battery hand tools enough to justify getting battery operated. Well except for sanders. Battery drills is what I have had for ever.

My thoughts is that the manufacturer will change battery design and that will render the tool useless long before the end of the tools life.

You do need a special charger with lithium ion.

Yeah but NiCd batteries were the pits. Rebuilding them was big business but rebuilts were just as bad.

I have bundles of them. I have some really odd Ryobi tools that are worthwhile for even single use. For many applications, just getting out the cord and putting everything away again is 2/3s of the job. Battery tools fix all that.

Not so much now with Li batteries.

Maybe. Most NiCd rapid chargers didn't play nice with NMH but a slow charger (10 hour and above) worked fine. Some of the better NiCd chargers did too. Of course going the other way around (Li-MH charger with NiCd batteries) was perfectly fine.