bazzab Posted December 5, 2013 Report Share Posted December 5, 2013 Hi all. Had a cordless drill for fair old while and its served me well. Batteries take charge but dont last very long. So thought ill treat it to some new batteries. So had a little google best price £68 EACH!!!!!! Somewhat miffed I decided ill get a new drill then. Few mins later thought hang on a min there cant be anything special to them. Stripped battery down and found its made up of smaller batteries linked together. So goggled them babies and there £1.08 each, I need 12 for each so my maths make that £12.96 each battery so to do both £25.92. (Disgusting con by drill manufacturers imo.) Gonna order some up and have a bash. Anyone done the same? Any thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Geordie Posted December 5, 2013 Report Share Posted December 5, 2013 Quite a few people do this. Cordless phone batteries are the same. Maplin have a set of 2 branded phone batteries for about £20 and if you check them properly they are just 850mah AAA batteries. I got a pack of 4 1100mah rechargables for £3.30 Makes you wonder. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bazzab Posted December 5, 2013 Author Report Share Posted December 5, 2013 Ah lovely job was a bit worried to be honest didnt wanna blow myself up!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChAoS Posted December 5, 2013 Report Share Posted December 5, 2013 Anyone done the same?Sort of. My late father had a Bosch PSR 14.4 (IIRC) and, after being left on charge, the batteries were getting very "tired". Eventually, the charge-just-before-using ploy failed to work and it appeared the charger had stopped working. So, I took it apart. The charging circuit comprised one LED and current-limiting resistor and four diodes in a bridge-rectifier configuration. No smoothing, current limiting or time-limiting of the charge current. It was the shoddiest piece of consumer gear I'd ever seen. (I'm assuming that it wasn't fake; it was bought from Machine Mart, I believe.) Anyhoo, as you say, the battery packs were, in them days, made of a bunch of NiCDs. However, I always found that, whenever I went to use gear with NiCDs in, that they'd lost a good deal of their charge already. (I didn't use the gear *very* often.) So, I went a different route. I replaced the NiCDs with a very small 12V SLA pack. They cost around ten quid at the time. You lose capacity compared to NiCDs and NiMHs and certainly compared to Lithium batteries. Also, being slightly too low a voltage, it's not as powerful as it used to be. However, it's cheap and the self-discharge rate is very low which means that it can left in the man-cave and, when you need it, it *works*. Finally, SLAs can be charged with any constant-voltage PSU with the voltage set to the correct value. Also, of course they can be float charged, if you wish. This approach is no good for heavy work but for driving woodscrews and drilling small holes, it's just fine. Regards, Mark. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thepasty Posted December 5, 2013 Report Share Posted December 5, 2013 I do stuff like this all the time, even go as far to dismantle motors etc to replace worn parts. If its broken or loosing life I always open things up to have a look see whats what. My drill battery died so I cut part off the battery that holds the contacts to the drill binned the crappy batterys that were within and used a lithium polymer battery pack. works a treat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sha Bu Le Posted December 5, 2013 Report Share Posted December 5, 2013 Its the same with lantern batteries (if anyone remembers them) stuffed full of AAA non rechargeable, can be easily changed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aris Posted December 5, 2013 Report Share Posted December 5, 2013 Going the other way around - If you need 18650's - some laptop batteries are full of them. Typically when a laptop cell goes bad, it's not all of them, just one or maybe two, the rest are still OK. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thepasty Posted December 5, 2013 Report Share Posted December 5, 2013 now thats good to know Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billy. Posted December 5, 2013 Report Share Posted December 5, 2013 (edited) Did you get any indication about what type of batteries you swapped out, also the milliamperage? Batteries are usually pricey because they're made of exotic materials and have a better lifecycle. Doing batteries on the cheap will have a detrimental effect on the appliance over time. Needless to say, businesses need to make money. If it was all at the price you found the batteries at, they'd never make any profits. Edited December 5, 2013 by Billy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thepasty Posted December 5, 2013 Report Share Posted December 5, 2013 (edited) Doing batteries on the cheap will have a detrimental effect on the appliance over time. As long as you dont over voltage they'll have no effect what so ever on the appliance. If you get the battery choice wrong you could pull to many amps from them and knacker the batteries (which can be dangerous if using Lithium) but that wont effect the appliance at all. Edited December 5, 2013 by thepasty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bazzab Posted December 5, 2013 Author Report Share Posted December 5, 2013 I checked specs etc on them. All the same so cant be any difference. Typical manufacturer bolting us up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
victorismyhero Posted December 5, 2013 Report Share Posted December 5, 2013 Just make sure you get the ones with tabs on, to solder to. Soldering direct to the battery is a fruitless, not to mention suicidal thing to try. the original batteries will have "spot welded" tags on, this doesnt heat up the battery since its so quick. The severe cooking involved with soldering however............ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jef Posted December 6, 2013 Report Share Posted December 6, 2013 Having "boosted" my dewalt batteries with my welder 6 months ago, they have eventually bit the bullet tho it worked well for that time. Interesting read this, so I might give it a go this weekend. JF Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bazzab Posted December 6, 2013 Author Report Share Posted December 6, 2013 Just make sure you get the ones with tabs on, to solder to. Soldering direct to the battery is a fruitless, not to mention suicidal thing to try. the original batteries will have "spot welded" tags on, this doesnt heat up the battery since its so quick. The severe cooking involved with soldering however............ oh yes mate I dont fancy trying that. They got tags on ready. Just wait for em to arrive them give it a bash. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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