[PLUG-TALK] NiCad questions

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Tue Sep 15 04:47:11 UTC 2009


I have various power tools that use 18v NiCad battery packs. I bought
most of the tools and four battery packs last summer. I remember using
the drill to put up a fence. I could go about four hours on one battery
pack. The battery packs recharge completely in one hour.

The tools remained vrtually unused over the winter, but now I am using
them again. I am lucky to get half an hour out of a battery before it
needs to be recharged. Sometimes a battery pack acts dead even though
it has been in the charger for over an hour and the charger says it is
fully charged. 

At the time I bought the tools I could have gone with lithium ion
battery packs instead. But the price for a dual pack of NiCad was $50,
and a single lithium ion  battery was $90. The li-ion literature says
"twice the power." Hmm, twice the power, but 3.6 times the price. I'm
not a math genius, but I think I can figure this out.

However, if the NiCad batteries go flooey after a few months, perhaps
the li-ion batteries are a better deal. Before I spend a couple hundred
dollars on li-ion batteries and a new charger I thought I'd ask for
comments and suggestions.



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