I will start with an appology to all the Dewalt and Ryobi fans on Instructables but I am a Metabo tools man. I use their 18V Drill, Impact Gun and 4" Grinder. My van was broken into last year and the tools but not the batteries taken. I replaced the tools and ended up with yet more (10) batteries and 6 chargers. I do some site work, all with my laptop and rarely near a
power outlet so I decided to see if all of these extra batteries in my van could come in useful. You will need: At least 1 power tool battery 1 SPARE battery charger (after this 'ible it will never charge a battery again) 1 compatible laptop charger A multimeter Knowledge of your laptops operating voltage. Now time for the warnings.... This
instructable may expose you directly to AC electricity, this can and will kill you so be careful Check all of the voltages and polarities carefully as getting one of these wrong may cause damage to your laptop Please only do this if you know what you are doing yourself! pen the casing on the laptop power supply, you don't need to be very careful as we won't be
using it again. Find where the DC (laptop) side of the power supply is and using your meter confirm the voltage is correct for your laptop and identify the polarity, in my case the wire with the white insulation is positive. Use your meter to confirm that your battery also puts out a compatible voltage, my laptop needs 19.5Vish, all my tools are 18V but I know that a healthy battery should be above this, my meter confirmed 19.7V Open the casing on the power tool battery charger carefully as we need it again. Remove all of the charging circuit and discard it, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO USE IT WITHOUT THE CASING THIS MAY EQUAL DEATH! Remove the rubber grommet from the power cable as we will use this as the laptop power cable exit. Following the terminals on the battery, we are only interested in the positive and negative outputs
from the battery (not the charging terminals). In this case they are the red (+) and black (-). Remove the other wires to prevent confusion or a short. Push the power cable through the grommet, I needed to carefully run a drill bit through it first as my laptop cable is round but the old power cable was 2 core flat! Connect the positive and negative wires, I use push in 3M
terminals, it save on soldering and its stronger than crimp terminals. Step 5: Reassemble and TestScrew the casing back together, clip on a charged up battery and plug into the laptop. Voila, field charger from your cordless tool batteries. Be the First to ShareRecommendationsMy camera shut down from low battery just when I needed to take some pictures. Here's how to charge any battery enough to keep
doing the important stuff. Fact 1: All past and future rechargeable batteries can be safely trickle charged if you don't overcharge them. Trickle means low current, like half an amp for an average camera or phone battery. This is the battery to my Canon S30. It's got three terminals, labeled "+", "-", and "T". Warning! Wear eye protection and if anything weird happens don't breathe the fumes! What was that other terminal marked "T" for? TIMMY of course, just like in the nursery rhyme! "Digital sensor, huh?" would be a running joke back when Americans knew Greek and knew that digits are fingers. But then numbers got so much use we forgot about counting on fingers, and now people barely know how to do anything with their hands. Anyway,
here's a finger used as a digital thermometer. Which reminds me of the joke about the doctor... SAFETY WARNING: scroll to the bottom if you want to read safety warnings. Here I am charging my camera's battery from my car battery. I'm using three christmas lightbulbs at once as a current regulator to get half an amp to flow into the camera battery.
For example, here's my test of one of these mini christmas lightbulbs hooked up to a bench DC supply: Volts Amperes I tested two bulbs and the data was the same. Since
my car battery is at ~13 volts and the camera battery is at ~7 volts, there will be 6 volts across the bulb. So I put three bulbs in parallel to get about 0.5 amperes to flow into the battery. Now just stand there for fifteen minutes or so until your battery is
charged enough to take pictures again, you can make calls on your phone or whatever. SAFETY WARNINGS: Hopefully you own an electrical meter. As seen in the previous step, the best improvised current regulator is usually a small lightbulb. The bulb is great because the resistance goes way up when the filament gets hot and limits the current. And you can only put an amp or so through one without burning it out, so it acts as its own fuse. And they're
free gifts from garbage Santa. Here I'm using two bulbs in series to limit the current going into a gelcell. Use your multimeter to measure what current goes through your bulb at different voltages. Or you can just cowboy it and use one tiny bulb for a few minutes, while feeling to see if the battery gets hot or not. Wear eye protection and don't breathe the fumes! Step 4: Current and Voltage From a Bench SupplyThis step uses a bench power supply to charge a battery. A lot of us have those sitting around even if we can't find our cell charger. Or we know where to find an electronics guy who has one. Now what? Want to be totally mystified? Look up "lithium battery charge control". But we just want to take pictures or talk on the phone. So
here's what we do: Turn up the voltage and current limit knobs until 500 milliamps (0.5 amps) is flowing into your battery. If you feel like being careful look up how much current the experts use. My electronics guy told me to set my voltage limit to 8 volts for my 7.2v li-ion battery. Usually facts like that are luxuries. The point of this method is to trickle charge anything without being able to know much about the properties of the battery. Step 5: Time LimitIf you really have to do something else while charging your battery, you better hook up something to disconnect it after a few minutes. The whole point of this instructable is that we're not going to fully charge the battery because we don't know how, and we're in a hurry. So we're only going to charge it for ten minutes or so. My camera battery has 1200 milliamp/hours of capacity. So if it's fully discharged and we charge it at 500 milliamps, it would take more than two hours to fully charge it. Some types of batteries can be badly damaged by overcharging. Some are just damaged a little. That's it! Enjoy cautiously! 1 Person Made This Project!RecommendationsCan you charge batteries with any charger?Pick the right method. You should always charge rechargeable batteries in the device it's used in, the charger it came with or a charger recommended by the manufacturer. Chargers are designed for specific battery types; mixing chargers and batteries could result in unexpected problems.
How do you make a drill battery charger?Homemade Cordless Drill Battery Charger. Step 1: Cut Two Wooden Blocks to Hold the Battery Pack in Place. ... . Step 2: Cut a Second Side for Your Battery Holder. ... . Step 3: Add Copper Contacts to Your Battery Holder. ... . Step 4: Screw on Both Sides of the Battery Holder. ... . Step 5: Build the Circuit. ... . Step 6: Test the Charging Circuit.. Can I charge 18V drill battery with 12V charger?The best answer is 'No' because the 12V charger will not have the voltage force to recharge the 18V battery to it's full potential. Generally a charging voltage of several volts above the rated voltage of the target battery is required to fully top off the battery.
How do you charge a lithium battery without a charger?How To Charge a Lithium-Ion Battery Without a Charger?. Use a USB Port. If you are using a USB port, you first need to make sure that the port is outputting at least 2 amps. ... . Charging from an AC Adapter. ... . Use the Metal Contacts on your Terminals and on the inside wall of your Battery Case. ... . Charging with a Car Battery.. |