Replacing your cordless drill battery pack, whether it is a Li-ion or NiCd, is quite expensive, which is why you should learn what you can do in order to prolong your battery’s life.
The cordless drill battery life depends on the type of the battery, the quality of the cordless drill battery charger and the way you use your tool and charge your battery. In order to ensure that the battery is good for at least few hundred recharges you need to follow a few simple rules.
Whether you have Craftsman cordless drill battery, Panasonic cordless drill, battery, Dewalt cordless drill battery, Ryobi cordless drill battery, or Milwaukee cordless drill battery you must use a charger that has been made for your brand. Avoid buying cheap chargers since they will shorten the life of your battery, they will heat and melt and in general carry a lot of safe hazards.
The more expensive chargers have a few built-in safety features, which ensure that even if you leave your charger on for a long time and unattended, you won’t set your house on fire. Some of the latest studies in the US show that vast majority of the house fires are indeed started by faulty battery chargers.
After using your cordless drill to drive all those screws and fasteners, you should wait for a few minutes for the battery to cool down before placing it in the cordless drill battery charger. And even though a cordless drill battery pack can cost almost as much as a new tool, you should never open it and try applying some of the “techniques” that are supposedly going to bring a dead battery back to live. Many of these tricks that can be found on different online forums not only do not work, but can lead to the premature dead of your cordless drill battery charger.
When buying a replacement battery cordless drill, make sure that you buy the right battery – when in doubt call your cordless tool manufacturer or visit the nearest power tools store and ask for help. The choice you might have to make is between three types of batteries: Nickel – Cadmium (Ni-Cd), Nickel-Metal Hydride (Ni-MH) and Lithium Ion (Li-Ion).
Well, which one of these types is the best cordless drill battery?
Without a doubt the best cordless drill battery that you can buy is the Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) one – these batteries will not only give you more Amps per hour, which translates into longer run time, but they are also good for more recharges and weigh less than the two other types of batteries.
However, you should know that a Li-ion Dewalt cordless drill battery is likely to cost more than a In-Cd or In-MH Dewalt cordless drill battery and this is actually true for any brand. This is why even though purchasing a Li-on cordless drill battery pack is almost a must if you are a professional in the trade, if you use the cordless drill tools sparsely, the In-Cd or the In-MH batteries might work for you just as well.