Dewalt power tools

[jimmy]

Sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings, but those cunning accountants and marketing people at Dewalt, and indeed almost every other "Professional grade", i.e. expensive cordless driver manufacturer, have hit on a cunning wheeze to seperate you from your hard earned.

once you have bought the product, the charger is usually the first thing to go squiffy, but never mind eh, you've still got a good machine and two good batteries, so just bite the bullet and shell out for a new charger....Then one of the batteries dies. Do you replace that too. What then?

Unfortunatly, i've had this merry go round with Dewalt (i'll never touch them again, and i tell everyone. Also i've had pretty much the same scenario with Atlas Copco. £310 worth of the best cordless i've ever used..... until the charger died on it's **** quickly followed by one of the Batteries. They only wanted £147.00 for one battery.

The only honourable exception I know of from personal experience is Hitachi, but I have heard great things about the new 18V Metabo with IC 10 (I think) intelligent charger. Mind you, that comes in at about £275.

In the meantime while i'm saving the pennies, I bought a £17.98 corded 750 watt "hammer" ha ha drill from B & Q.
This now serves alongside my limping Atlas copco (now being sold under the brand name Milwaukee, presumeably because they have become too ashamed of the old name).

[wolf]

excuse me folks, but without being funny, i have owned a dewalt drill/driver for the last 9years, charger and batteries still going strong, and as for the dewalt rubbish of a previous post, they are the only manufacturer who still uses the same battery terminal through out the whole range, there for all old and new batteries will inter change.. along with the chargers.. if you abuse tools and chargers they screw up...don't we all..as for pricing.. i don't pay more than £35-40 for a 12v battery for any of my dewalts...and to prove a point, i now have over 6 drill/drivers/hammer drills of dewalts, all the batteries inter change so do the chargers ..no problems yet... other makers like bosch,makita etc keep changing the battery design(and charger) so after about 18 months, when the 1000 cycles of most batteries is about up and it dies you can no longer buy the damned things..so you have to by another drill anyway...not with dewalts... sorry other dewalt non likers, but after trying most other brands over the years(25 of work) i will always stick with what does not let me down or expire in less than a year...
most people, and i was one to start with abuse power tools, but if you look after them they will last for a very long time, like who out there actually cleans the tooling, or changes the carbon brushes when they start to spark.. and the odd drop of lithium grease now and again.... and as for battery chargers... i bet most out there are full of dust (and especially tiny metal filings) where they are just left in tool boxes/back of vans to rattle around, or even left so the electronic internals get damp......
as an old(sadly past on) engineer friend once said(and im sorry ladies) ...i bet you spend more time playing with your manhood than you do caring for your tools.....and it's your tools that earn you ,your money, not your manhood!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ultimatehandyman]

I must admit that I have never had any problems yet with any of my cordless tools and they are all either Dewalt or Bosch. I treat my tools with the respect they deserve and as I paid good money for them I look after them!

I'm not sure if this works or not so please only try this if your batteries are not holding charge to begin with- you will of heard of the memory effect when charging batteries! This makes batteries loose their charging capacites over time. I have been reliably informed that you can get a lot more use from batteries that will no longer hold a decent charge by putting them in a plastic bag and sealing it well, so nothing at all can get in. Then pop the battery in the freezer overnight, remove from the bag the next day and let it defrost fully, leave it a day if possible, then try charging it again. This is supposed to work but cannot be guaranteed.

only use this method on old batteries that you would otherwise throw away