O Milwaukee, you wound me.

[WeaselXP]

They said you were reliable and tough. They said you were the best. I kept you around, never knowing the real you. Today, I found you out. Beneath that tough exterior was something common and cheap. I was forced to make some drastic changes...

[Behemot]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

Whats the problem? You buy expensive drill, not expensive charger.

Besides, even if you do heavy daily work, which you most likely don't, you use it how long, 4 hours a day? Thats gonna last a decade with any caps.

[WeaselXP]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

Whats the problem? You buy expensive drill, not expensive charger.

Besides, even if you do heavy daily work, which you most likely don't, you use it how long, 4 hours a day? Thats gonna last a decade with any caps.

I buy capacitors from you and then you treat me like a cheap hussy. I see how it is. I left the Samxons in place.

[Behemot]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

No, I wonder what do you expect from that. These chargers "do" survive a decade, actually, they usually survive much longer than the drill (or longer than it is economically sensible to buy new battery packs for the drills). There is not too much stress put on them (couple amperes of current), they are used very occassionally, so every single manufacturer makes them as cheap as possible…does it surprise you? Makita, Milwaukee, Hitachi, Narex and many others, every single one of them is the same.

If they do go bad, they usually cost reasonable money…and are unviersal these days (for most packs of that single manufacturer), compared to those Li-Ion packs. Expensive as hell, they drop like flies and with NO chance for renovation. Good ol' Ni-Cd packs you can renovate always. Not anymore in EU! Introducing new Ni-Cd cells is completelly forbidden since october so we run out of stock and than we are fucked. Panasonic stops making them and we can only smuggle chinese crap afterwards (but there is no sense in that).

[WeaselXP]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

I expect that I now have a charger with better ripple current handling, superior filtering and better shelf life at very little cost over the common off the shelf units. Maybe. Either that or I just enjoy recapping.

[Behemot]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

I guess Cause batteries don't mind some ripple, if it's not too much…

[stj]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

i'm with Behemot on the caps.

what i dont like is all the yellow glue that will go brown, and the captive single-insulated mains cable.

[Behemot]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

Again…in this case, it will see so little operation time the glue will take decade to go brown. If it was working 10 hours a day than yes, it would be concern…

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

they drop like flies

That sounds just like ni-cad! (my experiences)

[kc8adu]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

the glue is the real concern.
have rebuilt a few of the li-ion packs,a ton of the nicad but dont recall any charger failures.

[dmill89]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

That sounds just like ni-cad! (my experiences)

That is usually a result of cheap "dumb" chargers that overcharge them and severely shorten their life (especially common with the Harbor-Freight/Wal-Mart specials and their equivalents sold else ware) rather than the packs themselves (even cheap Chinese Ni-Cads usually have decent life if charged properly). I have 20 year old Ni-Cad packs for drills that are still good (obviously used with a "smart" charger).

[Behemot]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

Where does one get such a smart charger? Are they universal? I got one cheap drill, former colleague had the cells replaced by cheap low-capacity chinese. I forgot it for half a day on charger couple times, now they are getting discharged quite fast.

On the other hand *some* overcharge is neccessary to balance the cells…

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

That is usually a result of cheap "dumb" chargers that overcharge them and severely shorten their life (especially common with the Harbor-Freight/Wal-Mart specials and their equivalents sold else ware) rather than the packs themselves (even cheap Chinese Ni-Cads usually have decent life if charged properly). I have 20 year old Ni-Cad packs for drills that are still good (obviously used with a "smart" charger).

That was with a manual charger that I plug in for the times stated, usually 12 hours or 24 hours max! And still get the sudden drop off!

Nickel-metal-hydride was doing better! With R/C vehicles, I seemed to get better results with a replacement 9.6 V pack that was Ni-MH.

Seems that Ni-cad sux at real high loads...

[Behemot]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

Ni-MH has higher energy density. But it is even more susceptible to under and overcharging.

[dmill89]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

Where does one get such a smart charger? Are they universal?

They are generally specific to the brand and pack type.

That was with a manual charger that I plug in for the times stated, usually 12 hours or 24 hours max! And still get the sudden drop off!

Those are the kinds of chargers that usually cause issues, I have a cheap "beater" harbor-freight drill with a charger like that, I took it apart once and it is literally noting more than a transformer and 4 diodes functioning as a bridge-rectifier, with no circuitry whatsoever to regulate the rate of charging or prevent overcharging, such chargers often cause overcharging and/or cell overheating (by comparison, my DeWalt with a smart charger not only prevents overcharge, but also monitors temp and pauses if the cells get too hot).

[goontron]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

That sounds just like ni-cad! (my experiences)

Why oh why did you dig up a necro'd thread?

[Stefan Payne]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

They said you were reliable and tough. They said you were the best. I kept you around, never knowing the real you. Today, I found you out. Beneath that tough exterior was something common and cheap. I was forced to make some drastic changes...

hu?

After reading the thread title I was expecting something awful. But what I see on those pics looks like a fairly decent powersupply with fairly decent caps as well - and the 'hot one' reasonably sized as well (10mm at least, maybe even 12mm diametre)...

But CapXon? c'mon...
There is a bunch of things out there that is much much much much worse than that. The KF is somewhere in the middle of the cap range, not great but not total garbage either...

[momaka]

Re: O Milwaukee, you wound me.

Why oh why did you dig up a necro'd thread?

Mr. RJARRRPCGP does that with many other threads. It's just his thing, I guess.