What's with battery prices?

[dnix71]

At work we have thrown away 3 consecutive cordless drill sets because it was cheaper to buy a new complete drill set than to simply replace failed battery packs. That's wasteful and makes the whole lot of use at work angry at what looks like a corrupt marketplace.

I just took home the last drill set and spent $40 from Lowes to buy an sb18-a nicad pack for an 18v Skil xDrive. Bosch, who markets Skil, will sell me a 'refurb' drill, case, 2 battery packs and the charger, online including shipping for $85 with a 1-year home guarantee.

Something is rotten here. The 15 cells inside are 4/5 sub-c, making the pack mediocre to begin with. I can't even buy 15 4/5 sub-c's with solder tabs for the price I paid for the complete pack at Lowes. Home Depot sells the charger, but does not sell the battery pack.

A Lipo pack is $70 at Lowes. I could and may convert one failed nicad pack to the same capacity lithium for much less than that. The official lithium pack must be the organic flammable lithium type, because it's smaller than the nicad pack but hold 4 times the charge.

Otherwise the drill is nice. It's just the battery pack that's junk.

[DamonHD]

I understand your frustration but I don't understand how it's "corrupt".  $#|+ty, yes.  Poor engineering (everything should fail at once after a reasonable lifetime, not one part early from being apparently massively underspecified), yes.

Why not take it up with your BBB or equivalent of our "Trading Standards Office" pointing out that the goods are clearly not fit for purpose?  It's a wonderful way to waste the vendor's time if you can't get their attention trying to do things the "right" way.

I agree it's horribly wasteful and I hope you can do something to stop it happening.

Rgds

Damon

[dnix71]

It's not brand specific, Damon. I call it corrupt because there should be no logical reason for 2 batteries to cost more than 2 batteries and the drill and charger and case together.
The charger by itself is $36 at Home Depot. You can't buy a 2-pack of these batteries either. Most other makers will sell a 2 pack for just a little more than 1.

It's also corrupt because it's wasteful. Stuff winds up in a landfill for no decent reason.

It's like in years past when people would throw away a perfectly good inkjet printer rather than replace the ink cartridges. The practice of charging more for the ink than the printer and ink should actually be criminal. The 3 highest points in Broward County where I live are all landfills. The highest is closed because it simply got too high. We don't need disposable appliances anymore. At least the EU requires ROHS. America has become a dumping ground for stuff that shouldn't be sold in a civilized country.

It isn't cost effective to replace the batteries in the smaller UPS's, either. When the battery fails the whole thing gets tossed.

The drill pack in question new at Lowes is cheaper than even having someone on eBay rebuild a failed pack. These are nicad packs, too. A lot of those failed packs will simply be thrown out instead of being disposed of properly. Radio Shack will take nicads for free, but many people aren't going to make the effort. The only credit I give Bosch on this is putting 15 cells in the pack. I've seen "18v" packs with 14 cells.

[DamonHD]

Yes, causing extra cadmium to end up in landfill is also horrible.

Why not take it up with one of the "green" organisations to embarrass the manufacturers?

Rgds

Damon

[Rover]

I agree on all points and on the following one I am guilty as charged

"It isn't cost effective to replace the batteries in the smaller UPS's, either. When the battery fails the whole thing gets tossed."

Yep you are right, I work for a small firm, doing numrous things, including running the servers which have UPS. It is not cost effective for me to buy new batteries for small UPS units. Wiish it were, but nope. I can have someone expend 2 hours on the battery/learn how to install etc (a lot of time they change and are not standard). So I lose the employee time for 2 hours..., billable cost about 250$ , for about , at most a 100$ unit charge.

I have a ton of dead UPS units in the shop, just needing batteries (most are msw , so don't email me , grin)

Sorry, but that is the way it is for us....

 

[taylorp035]

You can get an 18v drill with 2 battery packs from harbor freight for $20.  They are a good starting point for cheap battlebots, but I can't even begin to understand how they make a profit on them.

[ghurd]

My solder guy rebuilds packs.
Most use sub-C nicds.
He says the hardest part is figuring out how to get a pack open so it can be reclosed.  After the 1st one like it, the rest are pretty easy.  And there is less variation to the designs than I expected.

He changes more cordless drill motors than I expected too.  Many use the exact same motor, even different brands and different voltages.
G-

[dnix71]

This pack is actually easy to open. It has 4 screws with a combo square/straight slot so a regular screwdriver will fit the slot. But the 4/5 sub-c means common sub-c's won't fit.

Lithium has a much higher cell voltage so 5 or 6 low capacity lithium cells would easily fit. I have an account at HobbyKing, but their forums are full of complaints of month long waits for items supposedly shipped Hong Kong Post. If I had some way to know if the item was coming from their US warehouse I might order some B-grade Li and give it a try.

There is a dual chemistry charger for this battery now, so if you buy the updated charger you can use either battery safely. Li batteries are nice, but I would rather not buy the exploding type. I would need 6 LiFePO4's instead of 5 LiPo's.

[Bruce S]

Just a thought, but you could do like ZAP does and go to the recycle bin at HD or Lowes and pull packs from there and use the internal packs rebuild them to fit yours.
There's nothing to keep you from running the battery wires outside of the packs housing to an external battery pack.
Norm has posted some awesome pics and how-to's of what he does.

The cheaper than: Statement is totally true and I agree, it does not make sense. BUT for rebuilders/DIY'ers it's a golden opportunity.
Even the UPS's that cost more to replace the battery(ies) can have external connections made so available batteries can be used.
There is a beautiful post recently that showed an fairly new APC UPS being re-done as a AC-mains outlet installed in an automobile.

Just a thought;
Bruce S
 
 

[Norm]

Gosh guys, Whoever has a saber saw and knows how to solderand has a HF multimeter could do this.


The inside of the carring case can be cut out around the drill pocket....leaving you room for
90 cells...even if you had to recycle from old bat.paks checking out the bad ones and making
5 in a stack 3 in a series pak and paralleling 6 series pak gives you almost 8amp/hrs.
thru an 12ft extension cord still gives you plenty of lasting power lot more than a 1.3 battery pak.

   

  This is going to be my next project.
Norm.

[Norm]

No no these batteries do not attach to the drill....the case sits on the ground and the power
to the drill thru an extension cord. LOL
Norm

[ghurd]

Like this?  LOL
G-

[Norm]

Yep like that.....I remember you saying you hooked up a drill like
that....I've got one I have one a 6volt that I hook up to 12 volts
Wow some power! Like an 18 volt cordless ! So if it burns out tomorrow
It runs better than it did with the original dead batteries.
Norm

[zap]

Are you sure that's not one of those telephones made to look like a drill?

[richhagen]

I learned this trick from BT humble who had rigged an old 9.6 volt drill with a cord and alligator clips to run off of any 12V battery of the type that were most common in Fiji where we were working in 2007.  A year and a half ago, on my first trip to the Philippines where we installed some solar lighting kits, I used this trick in a jerry rigged fashion.  I bought a 12V cordless drill in Manila with just this in mind, and it was a good thing as the battery that came with it did not hold much of a charge.  We charged that one with a solar panels and charge controllers we had with us from the project, and we were able to soldier on by rigging the drill to work off of the 12v batteries we were using on the project.  We did less of this on the last trip although I think Bruce rigged solar panels up to charge the drill batteries at a few of the locations and I think we rigged up drills to run off of the 12v batteries we brought a time or two.  Rich

[Bruce S]

Rich is correct
Glad we did too. The rigging was a lifesaver. Just wish we had had more time.
RICH: Glad to see work is slowing down for ya.

Dinx71: As you can see there's a ton of stuff you can do to stick the cheap-o batteries from getting the best of ya.
Have fun with finding ways to stick it to them who every they may be 

NORM THAT is SOME battery pack. Good idea using the carrying case to hold the batteries Hot glue a smallish 10 watt solar panel on there and your'e set to head out to TomW's back 40 
 
Cheers
Bruce S