PeoplesElbow
Well-Known Member
You just have to know how to treat and maintain the batteries properly. Believe it or not I have NiCad tools that are over 15 years old and still work well.
Recommendations - lawn mowers
- Thread starter BOP
- Start date
Goldenhawk
Well-Known Member
Well, my "minute" was over two years ago with five appliances that share the same batteries and have saved me countless hours of fiddling with gas and pull-starting and finicky maintenance, not to mention fuel cost savings. These days, I just walk out to the shed and I'm mowing or trimming or blowing or sawing within seconds, and at a much quieter volume too.
In fact, if I had to replace the entire kit tomorrow, I'd do it again without hesitation, just for all the hassle I've avoided. I'm willing to pay a bit of a premium on the initial price for that experience and reliability.
You say I'm a sucker - I say I'm a deeply satisfied customer. Your mileage clearly varies from mine - and that's fine. Enjoy your tools. Next time you're in the shed cleaning your spark plugs or rebuilding your carb, think about the fact that I'm sitting on my deck enjoying a drink, having finished my job hours before.
I do too but the batteries do NOT last . You don't have to try to justify it to me . I have bought hundreds of battery tools drills. impact drivers. grease guns, circular saws, sawzalls , clippers , blowers, band saws, vacuums and hammer drills Thousands and thousands of dollars spent ! If you have a battery tool 15 years old you are either not using them everyday or have replaced the battery. I would wager that you have not spent your 1st thousand or you would have learned this.
PeoplesElbow
Well-Known Member
Actually I spent 10s of thousands on battery matching equipment, cases of lose cells, and thousands of hours matching and soldering up NiCad and NIMH battery packs that were used in RC car racing.
NiCads responded to dead shorting for storage. My newest NiCad pack I own for my shitty Black and Decker drill was purchased in 2011 and still works well.
I now use Ridgid tools because they will replace the battery packs under warranty and all the gear I owned was made obsolete by lithium packs.
Rigid makes good stuff most of mine were Milwaukee , Makita and a few Skil I have plenty of Rigid tools that were rebuilt at Wenger's electric motor repair in Loveville over the years..
kom526
They call me ... Sarcasmo
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Goldenhawk
Well-Known Member
Heh. You lose that wager. I'm not a full-time construction contractor, but in the last 20 years I've fully renovated four houses, built my own, and done a dozen other large construction projects including three house additions and a mother-in-law building. . I'm no stranger to power tools, and I've spent well over $1K on cordless tools. I'm on my third Dewalt cordless kit, purely from wear-and-tear. So I'm quite familiar with moderate-to-heavy cordless use.
Li-ion batteries generally are known to have a 600-1000 cycle life. Since you do construction full time, you probably put two or three cycles on your batteries every day, so you burn thru 600 cycles in a year or two at most. But the average homeowner buying a battery lawnmower might cycle 300 times in ten years. And most of those cycles would be fairly shallow, which also helps with battery life.
Furthermore, Li-ion batteries were only commercialized about 10 years ago. So 3/4 of your experience is probably with NiCad batteries, which have horrible lifespan characteristics. My first DeWalt 12v cordless gear had NiCad cells that had to be replaced annually, even at the "side job" pace of my renovations. But since the new 20V MAX Li-ion cells came out, I've been on the original set, through four full house renovations and new construction.
So your perspective is deeply skewed from what most people on this thread probably need to consider.
PeoplesElbow
Well-Known Member
This is only for NiCads, can't stress that enough.
At the end of the day make sure they are completely discharged, use a light that fits your battery. If you are going to use the battery tomorrow you are done, don't charge it until the next morning. If it is going to sit idle over the weekend leave it on the light with the light turned on, take it off an hour before you plan to charge it.
For longer storage after the light has been on overnight, remove and short the positive and negative terminals ( the battery must be at zero volts ) Ive kept packs in this state for years and they still work. Take the short off the night before you are going to charge.
For curiosity sake I've kept a few RC car battery packs from the 90s in this state and they worked last time I tried them a couple years ago.
At the end of the day make sure they are completely discharged, use a light that fits your battery. If you are going to use the battery tomorrow you are done, don't charge it until the next morning. If it is going to sit idle over the weekend leave it on the light with the light turned on, take it off an hour before you plan to charge it.
For longer storage after the light has been on overnight, remove and short the positive and negative terminals ( the battery must be at zero volts ) Ive kept packs in this state for years and they still work. Take the short off the night before you are going to charge.
For curiosity sake I've kept a few RC car battery packs from the 90s in this state and they worked last time I tried them a couple years ago.
Clem72
Well-Known Member
Until very recently even the most expensive portable tools used cheap charging circuits that just charged for a preset amount of time and/or continued to trickle charge continuously when batteries were plugged in. If they had any intelligence it was only -delta V detection to tell once they had "fully" charged (actually slightly overcharged) the cell.
Modern chargers should be intelligent enough to begin trickle charging around 80-90% full and should only periodically float charge. The 80v tools from Kobalt, Snapper, and Greenworks (all are made by Greenworks) have a good charger. It actively cools the cells with a fan, detects when they get too warm and charging might damage them, and trickle charges once it hits 90%. I have been running them for multiple tools for at least two years and can't detect any degradation, which would be obvious with the leaf blower. At full tilt it only ever got 15 min from the 2 amp battery, and I still get 15 min. It will run 45 minutes in low power mode, which is about equivalent to my old plug-in unit.
PeoplesElbow
Well-Known Member
True, if the chargers were that bad with lithium batteries there would be a lot of burnt down houses and injured people.
glhs837
Power with Control
Homeowoner and every day use as a contractor are two completely different data sets. Thats like judging a Tesla by experience with a first generation Nissan Leaf.
I'll use my 80v chainsaw four to five times a year, the backpack blower about 15-20 full discharge-charge cycles annually. weed whacking the little bit I have ti wack wont even use a full charge.
I'll use my 80v chainsaw four to five times a year, the backpack blower about 15-20 full discharge-charge cycles annually. weed whacking the little bit I have ti wack wont even use a full charge.
PeoplesElbow
Well-Known Member
I always use a full charge with every wack.
WingsOfGold
Well-Known Member
Damn shame, like I said at one time they were quality..... now they would give Murray a run on the junk end if they still existed.
Enough said if you bought DeWalt you are a bigger fool than even I thought !!
Goldenhawk
Well-Known Member
I've provided facts and information; you've just done a lot of name calling and insulting. Let's just leave it at disagreeing.
I absolutely love my DeWalt drills, impacts, and corded angle grinder and reciprocating saw.
Let me tell you this, like I said I owned a construction company and bought thousands of dollars worth of tools . All the trucks were outfitted with power tools supplied by the company. A few of the men had issues with the battery tools that we provided and wanted to provide their own tools which were more to their liking which was ok by me . Several of them bought Dewalt branded tools and then used them for a couple of weeks. It was amazing after a couple of weeks you couldn't find a Dewalt tool on any of the trucks . The consensus was that the tools were too heavy and the batteries were crap nobody wanted to drag around a heavy drill or saw around no matter how convenient they were they took them home and left them there. Milwaukee and Makita batteries would last all day most of the time.
PeoplesElbow
Well-Known Member
There is a difference between the DeWalt tools sold at Lowes vs ones sold by tool stores. Plastic vs Metal gears, lower grade ball bearings etc. I would wager they got ones from Lowes, at one point DeWalt was owned by Black and Decker so the ones Lowes sold were most likely yellow Black and Decker tools. As far as I know the Bosch tools sold at Lowes are still pretty good, the Porter Cable are not.