I have a Black and Decker cordless drill that will not work. How can I tell which component is the culprit- the battery, the charger, - the drill itself? I cannot find anyone that has the same type of battery for their drill so I can’t test it in someone else’s drill. The charger’s light comes on when I put the battery in it but is it really charging?
Give us some more symptoms: does not work at all, does not turn fast enough, works but only for a short time…
Most solutions I’d offer would involve a multimeter. Or I guess a small lamp of a suitable voltage and some wire. Got those?
My diagnostic for B&D cordless drills: I take it to Home Depot. They say, “Yep. Your drill’s not working.” I say, “Can anything be done?” They say, “Repair will cost you more than a new drill.” I buy a new drill.
You may be able to take your new drill somewhere that sells the battery, and sweet-talk them into letting you try a different battery. Other than that, I got nothing.
Sounds like this has happened before…in fact the way you word it, sounds like it’s happened a couple of times. My suggestion, dump the B&D and pick up a DeWalt. 18V Hammer is nice, but weighs a ton. I was very fond of my 12V, but it seems to have grown legs and walked off.
As for the OP. Yea, you’re most likely (depending on syptoms of course) gonna need a multi meter. Check the charger and the battery for starters. Oh, and how old is it?
Check the phone book under tool repair. There’s a DeWalt store near me who advertises that they fix other brands-greater likelihood that they’d have another battery/charger to let you try.
B&D owns DeWalt (and Porter-Cable, Delta and a number of other brands) so it’s possible that a shop servicing cordless tools under one name can help with others.
I’ve found that the batteries and chargers between Dewalt, Black & Decker, and Elu are the same.
In the past I had a number of Elu cordless drills, and replaced the both the batteries and chargers at differant times with Black & Decker types, and still later when I got a couple of dozen dewalt theirs were also the same.
The Elus and Dewalts are only worth the high prices if you are using them all day every day as true worktools and not as DIY stuff.
When used this way, it more than justifies that cost of replacing duff parts, and keeping a stock of new, especially the brush/brusholders which are integral units, and also the electronic trigger modules.
As for testing them, if you have access to a large regu;ated power supply, you an test the drill by a bit of careful jury rigging, and you can use your power supply to try get a charge into the battery.
It may not be worth the efffort though, phone around and find out the price of spares , if its the charger, the components inside are cheap generic ones and you can replace them if you have the skills but batteries tend to be expensive.
My money is on the battery/charger. If you can cruft together a replacement battery it will likely work fine.
Oddly enough one of my woodworking magazines just ran a short “how to” bit on testing the battery voltage. This will at least tell you if the battery is not getting fully charged although it won’t tell you if the culprit is the charger or the battery (but it will at least eliminate the motor as a source of trouble).
Get a multimeter (you can buy them cheaply at Radio Shack or an auto parts store). Set it to the 25V range and touch the probes to the contacts on your battery. You should get a readout close to the rating of the battery (I think within about 1.2V but I don’t have the article in front of me).
My 14.4V Porter-Cable was showing signs of sluggish performance and I just tested both batteries. The one that had a quick recharge yesterday and is working (albeit slowly) hit 10v, the one that doesn’t work at all was at 1v.
I’m guessing this means that the batteries are dying (the charger status light shows “charging”, which leads me to believe that the batteries just won’t hold a good charge any more). I’ll check replacement prices but I have a feeling it’ll be cheaper to buy a new drill; Ridgid is looking attractive since they come with a lifetime warranty which covers the batteries.
The only problem with that evaluation is that a battery can show decent voltage at zero load, yet fall to a very low level immediately, or very quickly when subjected to load.
Without getting too deep, the OP’s batteries could have developed internal memory, and he doesn’t tell us if they’re NiCd, NiMh, or other.
Fair enough. If the battery shows full voltage after charging, regardless of whether it dies quickly once loaded, that would mean that the charger is OK and the battery needs replacing, right?
FWIW I looked up the price of new batteries for my drill, $70 apiece. Compared with getting a brand new drill ($160) with the various little improvements and features that have come along over the past few years it doesn’t make economic sense to replace the batteries.
Bit of a shame, the tool is great. Makes it seem like you aren’t buying a cordless drill, you’re buying two batteries and getting a drill and charger for free. Kind of like inexpensive inkjet printers where new toner costs about as much as the original printer did.
I’ve had my old 9V Makita for over 10 years now, and have had to replace the battery only once, cost about $25.00.
Never had much luck with Black & Dicker products.
How many hours on that drill?
Find the points between the battery and the drill motor. Disconnect. With a voltmeter measure the voltage from the battery. If 0V then battery or charger is bad. Connect a power supply to the motor and see if the motor works. If no roundee roundee then the motor is bad.
Here’s the deal with rechargeables. If the tool is not working at all, it’s likely that several cells have shorted out.
To tell this, take the multimeter reading as indicated above. Now if it’s a 14.4 tool, you should see close to 14.4. But if you see 13.3, 12.2, 11.1, that means one, two, or three cells are shorted out.
Each cell provides approximately 1.1 volts (nicad, NiMH), 1.2 volts if Li-Ion or standard alkaline or dry cells.
If the voltage drop is 1.2, 1.1, or a multiple of either of those values, you have bad cells in the battery and need to replace it.
Like Rico said.
Plus in most cases the cells are just small, AA or AAA, rechargeable batteries. They’re strung together and cased to make one battery.
If you’re not a heavy-duty cordless drill user (more hobby than professional use), you can buy a brand new B&D 14.4V cordless drill with 2 batteries, flashlight and stud finder for under $85. The only drawback to this one is that it does not come with the quick-charger. The standard trickle charger in this package takes 4 hours to fully charge the battery. A quick charger is another $50.
I also had a 9.6V Makita for many (at least 10) years and I used it quite heavily. I replaced it’s batteries when they failed and it’s trigger switch when that went. However, replacing the batteries only got me another year or so of poor service from the drill. As near as I could tell, the non-replaceable motor brushes were worn out. So the replacement batteries were a complete waste of time and $$.