Howard Winter wrote:
> I have standardised my cordless tools (drills, saws, etc) on a particular manufacturer's 18V range, and I am 
> well pleased with the quality of the equipment.  However, the batteries are *darned* expensive!  I saw some 
> for sale on eBay and won one for about half the price in the shops, but when it arrived I found it wasn't 
> actually made by the firm themselves, it was a no-name copy (this wasn't mentioned in the eBay auction!).  But 
> it seemed to work and I carried on using it in rotation with the genuine ones I have for a while.

I've got two drills here - a Dremel MultiPro (the two-speed one) in a 
Wolfcraft drill stand that I use as a PCB drill, and a Nu-Tool 12V cordless. 
The Nu-Tool is cheap and plasticky, but I'd expect that since it only cost a 
tenner from Makro :P

Nice for drilling holes in plastic instrument cases though. I do intend to mod 
the charger to allow me to connect it up to the smart charger I'm working on - 
the bundled charger is absolutely dire. It charges the battery in two or three 
hours, but doesn't have any fast-charge cutoff circuitry I can find...

> It shows that not only was the assembly shoddily done, but there can have been no quality control, because 
> surely they would have spotted the problem, and/or the voltage would have been lower than expected (I imagine 
> that before the first charge the voltage would have been about 2.4V too low, since the problem cell was 
> pushing the wrong way).

There's no quality control in anything these days :)

> Anyway, I carefully soldered in the new cell (wishing that Phil Pemberton lived closer so I could have asked 
> to use his spotwelder! :-)

You had tagged cells anyway - it would have been easier to solder to the tags 
than to weld on some new ones.

 > and charge-balanced the cells, and reassembled it into its case.  I seem to 
have
> saved the pack and it's now operating as it should have.  In future I'll make sure I'm buying the 
> manufacturer's own products, not a no-name copy!  But I may get them from the 'States, where they cost about 
> half what they do here...

And pay VAT, Import Duty and whatever handling charge the courier decides to 
put on top?
Make sure you factor all that in - sometimes things are not as cheap as they 
first seem...

-- 
Phil.                         | Kitsune: Acorn RiscPC SA202 64M+6G ViewFinder
philpem@dsl.pipex.com         | Cheetah: Athlon64 3200+ A8VDeluxeV2 512M+100G
http://www.philpem.me.uk/     | Tiger: Toshiba SatPro4600 Celeron700 256M+40G
-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist