Howdy,
So, following up on this...
In a feat of rationalization, I managed to turn the accidental death of a
battery due to my stupidity into buying a four tool combo set. :-)
A milwaukee 18v combo set on ebay was advertised as new, with the sawzall,
circular saw, drill, light, two 18V (ni-cad) batteries, & a charger.
Shipped to my house, it was $300.
If you're interested, here's how I got there. :-)
I'd told myself a while back that my next set of batteries would be the
v18 Li-Ion deals. I was attracted to the lighter weight / more power per
charge.
Milwaukee has a deal on those where for $200 you get two batteries & a
charger (the old ni-cad chargers that I have a bunch of don't work). It
was kinda a lot of money, but I've got a battery impact gun that uses the
Milwaukee batteries (bought when it was one of the only games in town) and
a drill I bought because it used the same batteries (important at an
event).
Downside was that none of my existing chargers would would with the new
v18 li-ion batteries, including my 12v car charger which is how I charge
the batteries at events. But I was gonna suck it up anyway for the coolio
new tech.
Anyway, I figure I should look at the v18 combo kits. The ones at the
retail places (coastaltool, etc.) are all a decent bit more than I want to
spend and there aren't any real deals.
So I look on ebay. Ebay has one (new) kit that has a sawzall, drill,
light, two v18 batteries, and a charger. Best part? $290 with shipping.
That's $90 over the cost of just the batteries/charger kit.
Then I notice the seller has some combined shipping deal, and I kinda like
the idea of getting one of the cordless circular saws. So I hit "show me
seller's other items".
I don't see a circular saw by itself, but I _do_ see another kit, using
the older 18v ni-cad or whatever batteries, that has a circular saw,
sawzall, drill, light, two batteries, charger, and a toolbag. And its
only $10 more than the kit above.
In the meantime, I've read somewhere about how Li-ion battery technology
may not be the best in terms of "overall battery life" (i.e. # of charge
cycles before battery doesn't work). And I've not really had any issues
with battery life really.
So for $10 more, I get the full kit. I mostly ignore that I'm now no
longer getting the v18 stuff, considering it to be a positive that I can
use my existing chargers. However, even if you ignore the v18 vs. 18v
battery technology, I still got two tools I didn't have and wanted, plus
another drill, plus a light, plus another charger (that I'll keep in the
RV) for only about $180 over the cost of two replacement batteries alone.
Mark
On Wed, 14 May 2008, Randall wrote:
>> Anyway, now the battery won't charge. I seem to recall
>> something somewhere saying that if you drain it all the way
>> dead, the charger won't recognize the battery on there and
>> won't try to charge it?
>>
>> Is that right? How do I convince it to try charging anyway?
>
> My Ryobi charger is like that. To work around it, put a little charge into
> the battery some other way. If you can figure out which terminal is which,
> an ordinary 12v automotive trickle charger will probably do. I use my
> adjustable bench supply.
>
>> Or, did I just really kill this battery and I should write it off?
>
> Unfortunately, it's likely that one or more cells is now shorted. Running a
> pack completely flat reverses the voltage on the weaker cells, which can
> cause crystals to grow and short the plates. There are potentially ways to
> (partially) recover shorted cells, but they require disassembling the pack
> and zapping the shorted cells with high current (from a capacitor).
>
> Randall
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