mrvette
Phantom of the Opera
I had a couple of battery drills over the years, on my 3rd one now, a 40 bux wonder from Harbor Freight...and one of the super cheep 18 volt batteries went bad, got warm but no charge, so I opened it up and measured all the cells every one measured ONE+ volt, except ONE cell measured nothing, .02 volts, so I removed the tacked on tabs, pulled the cell out, and jumpered it with a wire.....
all them packs are is a bunch of ~1.25 C cells, ni cad or Li Ion in series to generate a nominal 18 volts....
so I tried just this morning, and put the pack on the charger, measured 19 volts on the pack a couple hours later, and MUCH cooler...and sure enogh holds up under use.... however 2 days later and the drill is no go...WTF? I pull the pack apart and measure all the cells at decent power, put a flashlight load on them and they are all dead...won't hold a charge for shit, so maybe my concept is ok for other makers, but no good on the cheep harbor freight tool pack....
so for 15 bucks I bought another harbor freight DRILL, BATTERY pack is another configuration, which configures my mind just fine....and so now have TWO battery drills, and two different chargers, my charging shelf now looks like a damn battery store....;-(((
I have a Ryobi light here that is 18 volts, had one of the packs rebuilt for it alone, cheeper than replacing it by over ten bux....pulled it apart, same battery as the HF drill inside a C cell....
I measured voltage on those freebee cheep LED lights, the ones with 9 led's in them, about a inch diameter, the bat packs consist of 3 cells, that are replaceable, but the 3 put out ~4.5 volts....so times 4 and what do we have?? 18 volts....isn't that NICE?? take 4 of them cheep arrays, make a matrix for the large Ryobi light, and have enough light output to see Mars as night....and draw nearly zero current for the effort....
:bounce::quote:
hehe...the follow up post here....1/15/12 now, and so upon actually firing off 4 of them cheep flashlights cells as above, across the 18 volt Ryobi battery, they instantly grenaded 3 of them before I could kill the switch....WTF?? so I went after a stock assembled light....
measured the voltage from a stock battery pack when running the 9 LED light, voltage sure enough is 4.5 volts open circuit but when operating the light the output voltage is dropped to only 3.2 volts or so, hard as HELL on the little AAA batteries, but that is the safe forward operating voltage for the lights, ok, damnit so I bought 5 little flashlights for a buck a shot with the one good left over array that made 6 units I test fired up across the 18 volts, and they run fine and draw as a stock little light about .12 amps at ~3.2 volts....well under the current setup they draw .o7x amps I can't tell the difference in brilliance on the new display, but me hotrod flashlight is MANY TIMES more powerful than the stock Ryobi flashlight, and much better than my 4 cell Mag light....I going to leave it running for some time now to see about longevity, but I suspect it's gotta be lots better all around.....
all them packs are is a bunch of ~1.25 C cells, ni cad or Li Ion in series to generate a nominal 18 volts....
so I tried just this morning, and put the pack on the charger, measured 19 volts on the pack a couple hours later, and MUCH cooler...and sure enogh holds up under use.... however 2 days later and the drill is no go...WTF? I pull the pack apart and measure all the cells at decent power, put a flashlight load on them and they are all dead...won't hold a charge for shit, so maybe my concept is ok for other makers, but no good on the cheep harbor freight tool pack....
so for 15 bucks I bought another harbor freight DRILL, BATTERY pack is another configuration, which configures my mind just fine....and so now have TWO battery drills, and two different chargers, my charging shelf now looks like a damn battery store....;-(((
I have a Ryobi light here that is 18 volts, had one of the packs rebuilt for it alone, cheeper than replacing it by over ten bux....pulled it apart, same battery as the HF drill inside a C cell....
I measured voltage on those freebee cheep LED lights, the ones with 9 led's in them, about a inch diameter, the bat packs consist of 3 cells, that are replaceable, but the 3 put out ~4.5 volts....so times 4 and what do we have?? 18 volts....isn't that NICE?? take 4 of them cheep arrays, make a matrix for the large Ryobi light, and have enough light output to see Mars as night....and draw nearly zero current for the effort....
:bounce::quote:
hehe...the follow up post here....1/15/12 now, and so upon actually firing off 4 of them cheep flashlights cells as above, across the 18 volt Ryobi battery, they instantly grenaded 3 of them before I could kill the switch....WTF?? so I went after a stock assembled light....
measured the voltage from a stock battery pack when running the 9 LED light, voltage sure enough is 4.5 volts open circuit but when operating the light the output voltage is dropped to only 3.2 volts or so, hard as HELL on the little AAA batteries, but that is the safe forward operating voltage for the lights, ok, damnit so I bought 5 little flashlights for a buck a shot with the one good left over array that made 6 units I test fired up across the 18 volts, and they run fine and draw as a stock little light about .12 amps at ~3.2 volts....well under the current setup they draw .o7x amps I can't tell the difference in brilliance on the new display, but me hotrod flashlight is MANY TIMES more powerful than the stock Ryobi flashlight, and much better than my 4 cell Mag light....I going to leave it running for some time now to see about longevity, but I suspect it's gotta be lots better all around.....
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