Rebuild your Battery Packs (1 Viewer)

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TreeTrucker

TreeTrucker

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Nov 26, 2010
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Hello all, has anyone ever rebuilt their own cordless tool battery packs ? I've got a bunch of DeWalt 18V nicad tools and I am sick of buying batteries for them. The service life of their batteries is terrible. And I've always been real careful to use them correctly- not charge them when warm, not to run them down too low etc.
The 18V packs have 15 sub C batteries in them but one thing I'm not sure of is how the tabs are connected to the cells, it looks like they might be spot welded but I'm not sure. Thanks
 
on a related note, I'd also like to know about a good outfit that does this sort of thing. I see some ads but I have no idea which one is good.

I do see free older cordless tools on CL all the time because of bad batteries. Battery more expensive than the value of the older tool. What a terrible system.

(Well, not entirely, I got some nice 14V and 12V tools that I'll convert to 12V DC system for the truck one of these days...:) )
 
My one cordless phone takes a battery pack that turns out to just have three AA batteries in it. The pack is like $20 while a pack of four rechargeable batteries can be had for under $5. Yes, the packs have the tabs spot welded to them. I just soldered things back together and had no problems. A cordless tool with higher draw may be an issue over the minor draw for a cordless phone, though. Not sure if you'd heat things up enough to have problems with the solder.
 
Soldering to nicads is risky, you are likely to damage the batteries. A spot welder for nicad batteries is big $$$. However, you can get batteries intended for rebuilding battery packs that have tabs spot-welded on, then you can solder to the tabs.
 
soldering nicads/nimh is easy schmeasy. You need a good hot iron. I use an 80watter like this Amazon.com: Weller 80 Watt Soldering Iron: Home Improvement
Rough the cell up with a dremel grinding disc LIGHTLY where you will be soldering on bars/wires.
Use the really thin 60/40 solder from rat shack...its like 1/16" or smaller and melts and flows way fast compared to thicker solder.
With the really hot iron you only need to be on the cell for 2 seconds max to get a good joint. Any longer than that and you risk over heating the cell and your probably not using a hot enough iron.
Built many battery packs with this method. Another good tip...super glue the cells together 1st so they don't move around on you. Super glue and kicker from your local hobby shop works instantly.

Packs I built are for r/c stuff...cant see it being to different or tricky to do power tool packs. I think getting the case open is the hard part.
 
I've rebuilt battery packs for some items, it's pretty straightforward. A good hot iron is important, I use a 240watt one that minimizes heating the battery. The only reason I don't do it more is because the batteries are like $3-$5 each. For the price of buying the batteries you could almost buy a new drill w/2 new battery packs. That pretty much explains why I have so many cordless drills. Also, If you have a electronics/battery store near your house check to see how much it cost to have them rebuild it. I was going to buy new batteries for a Roomba battery pack, but it would have cost me about $35 to buy the batteries to do it myself. They did it for less than $30.
 
ducktapeguy said:
For the price of buying the batteries you could almost buy a new drill w/2 new battery packs. That pretty much explains why I have so many cordless drills.
Click to expand...

Yeah, for all the "green" stuff everyone talks about it doesn't make sense when buying an entire "whatever" is the same price or cheaper than buying the "replacement" parts.
 
Tell me about it, I wanted to rebuild an old air compressor but the cost of a few of the replacement parts was already more than half the cost of another compressor. It doesn't make financial sense because even if you rebuild it, all the other parts are still old an may probably need to be replaced eventually.

To the OP, if you have multiple battery packs I've heard that most of the time it's only one or two cells in the pack that go bad. You can strip all the bad packs and rebuild a couple of good packs out of them.
 
thanks for all the input. maybe someday they will invent a wireless power supply. hell , if we can do it for phones and internet .....
 
If anybody finds a good guide on how to DIY battery repacks, I'd love to know.

(Just did a hack job on my dead phone. The pack took AAs. Used some rechargeable ones I had with some aluminum foil for connection. Works great.)
 
I don't know about the DIY part of it but these guys go a great job on rebuilds. Longer lasting charge and more power than new. MTO Battery A Division Of Battery Builders

Also, I had thrown out/recycled some DeWalt 12V Nicads when they went bad a couple of years ago but I kept the drills. In hindsight I should have kept the batteries and had them rebuilt but I found a place with decent prices on new batteries and ordered a couple the other day to try out so I can get these drills back into service. Dewalt Batteries items - Get great deals on Milwaukee Batteries, Milwaukee 18v items on eBay Stores!
 
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