Replacing a rechargable battery
John
pilot holes and screwdriving. The battery pack seems to be on it's way out,
will not hold charge for very long. I have seen in a local Lidll
supermarket a replacement 12v pack, same connections and shape etc. Could I
use this instead or will it burn out the innards of my drill or just work
faster/longer?
TIA
John
忽帕
~
Phil Addison
Yes it will ruin it. You have to use the same voltage, but can use a higher
AHr (amp-hour) rating. I have found ReCell
http://website.lineone.net/~re-cell/ good. They refurbished my Bosch
battery, at 1/2 the price of a new one and increased the AHr. on't know
about PowerDevil but if its not listed ask them.
--
Phil Addison
http://www.diyfaq.org.uk/ for the UK.D-I-Y group FAQ
Dave Plowman
I'd guess it'd turn into a smoke generator.
If you can't get the correct battery at a sensible price, it's usually
possible to re-cell them. The end covers are usually just glued in place
and will come off with a stanley knife or similar.
However, the cells aren't 'standard' sizes that you can get in a shed -
they are normally 'sub C' which as it implies is slightly smaller than a C
cell - it's called an industrial size, and you need tagged versions as you
can't solder direct to a Ni-Cad.
Trouble is, from somewhere like Maplin, they cost more than a complete
'cheap' battery from the sheds, but usually less than a decent one from a
'name' maker. But they are better cells with a greater capacity.
Good Ni-Cads, with a good charger, can have a life of over 1000 cycles -
even up to 3000. But most cheap drills have also basic chargers which
reduce the life of the cells dramatically - especially if left on charge
beyond the stated time.
If you're even vaguely competent with soldering, it's possible to modify
the charger to an overnight charge which will lengthen the life of the
batteries considerably. Even if you can't, using a timeswitch is a half
way improvement - there are pretty cheap ones available these days.
--
* For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism *
Dave Plowman dave....@argonet.co.uk London SW 12
RIP Acorn
Ledswinger
news:4a9c73ffba...@argonet.co.uk...
>
> If you can't get the correct battery at a sensible price,
>
> 'cheap' battery from the sheds, but usually less than a decent one from a
> 'name' maker. But they are better cells with a greater capacity.
>
Accepted, but on a 12V drill like my Ryobi, I'd have to buy ten cells for
each battery pack. That's about thirty two quid per pack, slightly cheaper
than new battery packs at £46 a throw, but either way the cost of doing both
packs is not far on either side of the eighty quid of a new (reputable make
DIY) 12V drill which will probably perform as well or better than my
reconditioned machine. Might have to shop around to get the new one with
two batteries, but it can be done.
Any suggestions for cheaper sources of reasonable quality tagged sub-C
cells?
Led
Phil Addison
<ledsw...@blueyonder.co.uniformkilo> wrote:
>Any suggestions for cheaper sources of reasonable quality tagged sub-C
>cells?
Don't know about cheap but RS sell em. http://rswww.com/
I think Cs is the same as sub-c.
[fixed width font needed] (all +vat)
Sanyo
Cs 23mm dia x 43mm 377-7775 £3.37 (1-9) £3.20 (10+)
Size Min Typ Sanyo Charge current
cap cap P/No (mA)
(mAh) (mAh) 14-16hrs 1hr
Cs 1800 1900 KR-1800SCE 180 2700
RS brand
stock no 592-363 £2.28 (1-24) £2.07 (25-99)
cell I.E.C. nom. nom.
size designation capacity(Ah) voltage(V) charge Dia. H.
Cs(RR) KRH 23/43 1·4 1·2 140mA* 23·0 42·2
*non-continous(cyclic)
Dave Plowman
Ledswinger <ledsw...@blueyonder.co.uniformkilo> wrote:
> Any suggestions for cheaper sources of reasonable quality tagged sub-C
> cells?
Might be worth looking for a special offer of *any* battery in the sheds
- all the ones I've taken apart use sub-C cells. Got a spare 18v from B&Q
for IIRC about 20 quid - just over a quid a cell. But they're nothing like
as good as Sanyo ones.
I have a mate who works for a company who re-cons batteries for the
broadcast trade, and he supplies me with ready welded packs in any
configuration. But won't sell to the public, because Joe Bloggs can't be
told his brand new cells failed because of a badly designed charger.
--
* Hang in there, retirement is only thirty years away! *
John Stumbles
Well contrary to what almost everyone else has warned about, I have to
say I have an old B&D 7.2V cordless on which the batteries died and I
now run it from the caravan battery, which is around twice the voltage
and the drill has not burned out. It is also a lot more powerful.
However I am aware that it has the capability to dissipate a lot more
heat than it was ever designed for so I don't use it heavily for long
periods, in order to avoid overheating it.
Running it of a 12V lead-acid battery could also raise the risk of
actually blowing the motor (wire melting, in the same way a fuse
blows) if it stalled (e.g. bit jams in a hole) but in this case the
resistance of a few metres of flimsy cable and a cigar-lighter outlet
in the circuit protects it (and probably helps to protect it against
overheating too). You wouldn't get this protection with a 12V
replacement NiCd pack on the drill itself.
So I guess the bottom line is whether you're prepared to treat the
drill with a little care and wouldn't mind if you did blow it up
eventually. With cordless drills at around 25quid I'd go for it :-)
--
John Stumbles
http://www.stumbles.org/John
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Mark
> In article <0Cz57.5123$Ii1.7...@news1.cableinet.net>,
> Ledswinger <ledsw...@blueyonder.co.uniformkilo> wrote:
SNIP
. But won't sell to the public, because Joe Bloggs can't be
> told his brand new cells failed because of a badly designed charger.
>
curiosity killed the cat and I am sure it's been in a hundred times before
but.............
What is the definition of a good charger for NiCad batteries?
Just enough voltage so long, slow recharge and only recharge when empty
(flat?) is my guess.
Mark
Phil Addison
<dave....@argonet.co.uk> wrote:
> I have a mate who works for a company who re-cons batteries for the
>broadcast trade, and he supplies me with ready welded packs in any
>configuration.
Welded connections - that's a point. A diy job would probably use solder
and heatshrink sleeve to reinforce the joint whereas a pro re-builder will
weld the cells together. The latter is a much neater job - I have had
difficulty sometimes fitting wire and sleeving - and there is no risk of
damage to the cells from overheating while soldering.
It's one of those jobs not worth diy-ing when Recell will rebuild a 12V 2AH
pack for £37.40 inc. P&P and tax. You have to post your old pack to them so
add on say £3 and that's hardly more than the cost price of 1.8AH cells
from RS. If you're strapped for cash they will put in 1.2AH cells for
£30.80. Their price list is at
http://website.lineone.net/~re-cell/refurbishing_prices.htm, as I say I
used them and the battery came back by return + 1 day.
Dave Plowman
Huge <hu...@huge.nospam.org.uk> wrote:
> IME, when the cells died in my B&D cordless, I would have been better
> off throwing it away and buying another than recelling the battery
> pack.
> Not that I found out until I'd ordered the cells.
But you should find they have a much longer life. Hopefully.
--
* If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled? *
Dave Plowman
> Just enough voltage so long, slow recharge and only recharge when empty
> (flat?) is my guess.
You charge a Ni-Cad at constant current. For a simple charger, this
should be 1/10 th of the nominal capacity, ie 100mA for a 1000mA/Hr cell.
The charge time for this is overnight - ie 14 hours.
You can increase the charge by monitoring the battery temperature, and by
pulse charging. The third terminal present on many batteries is the
temperature sensor - but is not connected in cheap chargers.
You should never *completely* flatten a Ni-Cad - just re-charge when the
performance has dropped off. Re-charging after light use is the bad idea -
that's when the so called memory can happen.
--
* If vegetable oil comes from vegetables, where does baby oil come from? *
Thomas Prufer
<dave....@argonet.co.uk> wrote:
> Might be worth looking for a special offer of *any* battery in the sheds
>- all the ones I've taken apart use sub-C cells. Got a spare 18v from B&Q
>for IIRC about 20 quid - just over a quid a cell. But they're nothing like
>as good as Sanyo ones.
And you don't need to replace all the cells. Generally, there'll be
one cell gone bad, and you can replace that, and get a bit more life
out of the pack. Not that the remaining cells won't be a bit worn as
well, but you're not replacing it with a new one, either. If you keep
the old pack around, you can gut it and fix a few others with cells
taken from it for nothing.
You might need a shed, though.
Thomas Prufer
Dave Plowman
John Stumbles <jstu...@bluearc.com> wrote:
> So I guess the bottom line is whether you're prepared to treat the
> drill with a little care and wouldn't mind if you did blow it up
> eventually. With cordless drills at around 25quid I'd go for it :-)
It's not the actual voltage that burns out the motor but the current
flowing through the windings. If you employ some method of restricting
this current - like your thin wire - then you will probably be OK. But
doing this with a larger battery pack would be difficult for the
inexperienced. Ni-Cads can produce a vast amount of current for a short
time, so have to be treated with care.
On a similar tack, when you change a car from 6 to 12 volts, as was once
a fairly common DIY task, the starter motor didn't need to be changed - I
assume its cable restricted the current to a safe amount.
--
* Go the extra mile. It makes your boss look like an incompetent slacker *
geoff
<phi...@bigfoot.com> writes
Here's one for the FAQs:
All Batteries
Olds Approach
Tolpits Lane
Watford
01923 770044
They import and make batteries. They are the main VARTA agent and will
make up a battery to your specifications
Head of sales is Teresa Armour
Brownie points for anyone who can tell me what VARTA stands for
(One for Thomas Prufer perhaps - clue, the last "A" is akkus)
--
geoff
Phil Addison
<ge...@cetltd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <uq9eltcg1sh8pmkhp...@4ax.com>, Phil Addison
><phi...@bigfoot.com> writes
>>>It's one of those jobs not worth diy-ing when Recell will rebuild a 12V 2AH
>>pack for £37.40 inc. P&P and tax. You have to post your old pack to them so
>>add on say £3 and that's hardly more than the cost price of 1.8AH cells
>>from RS. If you're strapped for cash they will put in 1.2AH cells for
>>£30.80. Their price list is at
>>http://website.lineone.net/~re-cell/refurbishing_prices.htm, as I say I
>>used them and the battery came back by return + 1 day.
>Here's one for the FAQs:
>
>All Batteries
>Olds Approach
>Tolpits Lane
>Watford
>01923 770044
>
>They import and make batteries. They are the main VARTA agent and will
>make up a battery to your specifications
Make up from scratch? That sounds expensive. Will they refurbish like
Recell does? How do their prices compare? Are they online?
patndave
"Thomas Prufer" <pru...@i-dial.de> wrote in message
news:4sgilt4eer553mm71...@4ax.com...
>
> And you don't need to replace all the cells. Generally, there'll be
> one cell gone bad, and you can replace that, and get a bit more life
> out of the pack. Not that the remaining cells won't be a bit worn as
> well, but you're not replacing it with a new one, either. If you keep
> the old pack around, you can gut it and fix a few others with cells
> taken from it for nothing.
Don't do this, as the old cells will charge/discharge at a different rate
than the new one, resulting in reversed polarity of one or more cells. This
will result in an even earlier failure.
It makes more sense to change all the cell for new ones. Which means that
all cells have the same capacity again.
Rechargeable cells have a life of about 1000 charges.
Some do, some don't.
Regards
Dave
Thomas Prufer
wrote:
>Don't do this, as the old cells will charge/discharge at a different rate
>than the new one, resulting in reversed polarity of one or more cells. This
>will result in an even earlier failure.
And what of it? I say replace the ones that have gone bad with others
from a "used" pack, where one or more cells have gone bad. So none of
the cells will be in their prime. You can still throw the lot out if
all or most of the cells are near-dead.
If you can get another fifty cycles out of a pack for nothing, that's
good, isn't it?
Thomas Prufer
Thomas Prufer
wrote:
>Brownie points for anyone who can tell me what VARTA stands for
>(One for Thomas Prufer perhaps - clue, the last "A" is akkus)
Gotta pass -- the website sez nothing, but it was named in 1904.
But the people that ran Varta From 1923 to 1982 look the same as the
people who own a controlling stake in BMW, hmmhh...
Thomas Prufer
geoff
<pru...@i-dial.de> writes
Aufbau
Reparatur
Transportieren
Akkus
'scuse my German where it's wrong,
I've been a long time away
--
geoff
patndave
I would doubt that you would get another 50 full cycles out of it.
You are more likely to get another 50 short cycles out of the re-vamped
pack.
A complete set of nicads will give you another 1000 full cycles.
A set of NiMh will give you another 1000 cycles that are 3 times longer than
nicads.
Dave
Dave Plowman
patndave <patn...@lineone.net> wrote:
> A complete set of nicads will give you another 1000 full cycles. A set
> of NiMh will give you another 1000 cycles that are 3 times longer than
> nicads.
In practice, like for like, both charged on professional chargers, I've
not found that NiMh give anything like the same service life as Ni-Cads,
so much so that they are reserved purely for devices that *really* need
them, due to the extra cost.
And again like for like, I've yet to come across a NiMh cell that has
three times the capacity of a good Ni-Cad - more like 25%.
--
* I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast *
geoff
<phi...@bigfoot.com> writes
>On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 11:41:41 +0100, in uk.d-i-y geoff
><ge...@cetltd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>In article <uq9eltcg1sh8pmkhp...@4ax.com>, Phil Addison
>><phi...@bigfoot.com> writes
>
>>>>It's one of those jobs not worth diy-ing when Recell will rebuild a 12V 2AH
>>>pack for £37.40 inc. P&P and tax. You have to post your old pack to them so
>>>add on say £3 and that's hardly more than the cost price of 1.8AH cells
>>>from RS. If you're strapped for cash they will put in 1.2AH cells for
>>>£30.80. Their price list is at
>>>http://website.lineone.net/~re-cell/refurbishing_prices.htm, as I say I
>>>used them and the battery came back by return + 1 day.
>
>>Here's one for the FAQs:
>>
>>All Batteries
>>Olds Approach
>>Tolpits Lane
>>Watford
>>01923 770044
>>
>>They import and make batteries. They are the main VARTA agent and will
>>make up a battery to your specifications
>
>Make up from scratch? That sounds expensive. Will they refurbish like
>Recell does? How do their prices compare? Are they online?
>
I found them invaluable when I repaired someone's house alarm which had
a 24v NiCad stack which needed replacing, it had to be custom made, it
cost about 20 quid
A 3 cell NiMH as can be found in e.g. Potterton EP2000 (150mAH) costs
1.62
found them:
www.allbatteries.com
sa...@allbatteries.com
>--
>Phil Addison
>http://www.diyfaq.org.uk/ for the UK.D-I-Y group FAQ
--
geoff
Dave Plowman
geoff <ge...@cetltd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I found them invaluable when I repaired someone's house alarm which had
> a 24v NiCad stack which needed replacing, it had to be custom made, it
> cost about 20 quid
Strange choice for a standby supply on a burglar alarm.
--
* geeks shall inherit the earth *
geoff
<dave....@argonet.co.uk> writes
>In article <yLCYTCC5...@cetltd.demon.co.uk>,
> geoff <ge...@cetltd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> I found them invaluable when I repaired someone's house alarm which had
>> a 24v NiCad stack which needed replacing, it had to be custom made, it
>> cost about 20 quid
>
> Strange choice for a standby supply on a burglar alarm.
>
--
geoff
Phil Addison
<ge...@cetltd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <tr9jltotgrp32rv9l...@4ax.com>, Phil Addison
><phi...@bigfoot.com> writes
>>On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 11:41:41 +0100, in uk.d-i-y geoff
>><ge...@cetltd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>>Here's one for the FAQs:
>>>
>>>make up a battery to your specifications
>>
>>Make up from scratch? That sounds expensive. Will they refurbish like
>>Recell does? How do their prices compare? Are they online?
>
>I found them invaluable when I repaired someone's house alarm which had
>a 24v NiCad stack which needed replacing, it had to be custom made, it
>cost about 20 quid
>
>A 3 cell NiMH as can be found in e.g. Potterton EP2000 (150mAH) costs
>1.62
>
>found them:
>
>www.allbatteries.com
>sa...@allbatteries.com
Thanks geoff - earmarked for the FAQ. The site doesn't mention re-building,
though perhaps they would consider fitting new batteries in an old case to
be a 'custom' requirement. Did they supply to you as an individual or only
through your company? They site gives the appearance of 'trade only'.
John Stumbles
> In article <b65eb2a6.01071...@posting.google.com>,
> John Stumbles <jstu...@bluearc.com> wrote:
> > So I guess the bottom line is whether you're prepared to treat the
> > drill with a little care and wouldn't mind if you did blow it up
> > eventually. With cordless drills at around 25quid I'd go for it :-)
>
> It's not the actual voltage that burns out the motor but the current
> flowing through the windings.
OK smartypants ;-) I didn't actually say it was the voltage, and it's not
the current either: it's the heating effect ... suppose if it were a
superconductor (if they can have aircraft generators on a thread on car
cuppa makers I don't see why we shouldn't get down to a few degrees absolute
talking about cordless drills :-)
If you employ some method of restricting
> this current - like your thin wire - then you will probably be OK. But
> doing this with a larger battery pack would be difficult for the
> inexperienced. Ni-Cads can produce a vast amount of current for a short
> time, so have to be treated with care.
yup, used to carry a spare set of AAs for the bike lights in my trouser
pocket, with my loose change, until the plastic sleeve at the top of one
cell wore away a bit. That was way back in the days of hotpants 8^)
>
> On a similar tack, when you change a car from 6 to 12 volts, as was once
> a fairly common DIY task, the starter motor didn't need to be changed - I
> assume its cable restricted the current to a safe amount.
That and the thermal mass of the motor was probably enough that it would
survive an average starting. I bet if you had a healthy battery and the car
wouldn't start you could do it some damage cranking it too long.
Now how about changing the polarity on those old +ve earth motors like
moggie 1000s - I liked the bit where you kicked the dynamo with a bolt from
teh battery to get its residual magnetism to flip over!
--
geoff
<phi...@bigfoot.com> writes
>>
>>A 3 cell NiMH as can be found in e.g. Potterton EP2000 (150mAH) costs
>>1.62
>>
>>found them:
>>
>>www.allbatteries.com
>>sa...@allbatteries.com
>
>Thanks geoff - earmarked for the FAQ. The site doesn't mention re-building,
>though perhaps they would consider fitting new batteries in an old case to
>be a 'custom' requirement. Did they supply to you as an individual or only
>through your company? They site gives the appearance of 'trade only'.
>
One can always pretend. When I first used them, it wouldn't have
mattered one way or the other. Ms Armooor is a nice, friendly person,
it's probably not a problem.
>--
>Phil Addison
>http://www.diyfaq.org.uk/ for the UK.D-I-Y group FAQ
--
geoff