Up yours Black & Decker.

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yeah! The rat bastards!

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Soon to be taken over by Lucas?

Hi!

I could tell you about a lightly used Dustbuster that spent most of its life on the charger. This in turn caused the batteries to burn up after a relatively short service lifetime--maybe only two years, if that many.

I found out that--just as you say--the replacement parts are astronomically priced whether purchased from B&D or elsewhere. I didn't have any sub-C cells in the junkbox, and bigger ones didn't seem to work as a replacement. They wouldn't fit.

It's not only that--it's also rather unkind to the environment to toss an otherwise working piece of equipment and buy a new one only to have the same thing happen. But I guess they don't really care and have slim profit margins on each tool, so they don't really care.

I ended up saving the interesting parts from the unit, and tossing the rest.

William

The same company owns Black & Decker and DeWalt, but it doesn't mean the product lines are identical. I use my DeWalt 18 v. driver and trimsaw regularly, and the original battery packs are still at about 95% capacity after six years.

I use them until they are discharged, and then I recharge them.

Maybe you are less careful with your battery packs, and that's why you have problems.

ian field wrote:

Mike Berger wrote:

I've got a 12V Dewalt drill that I've had for a long time - probably

7-8 years or more. I too am careful with the packs and they have held up well until recently. Within the last year one pack has developed fairly serious lack of capacity, and the other is beginning to show the signs. This is to be expected at this age...

My beef with them is that new packs list at $79.99 (Canada) while a new 12v drill which comes with two packs is $159.99. This means that Dewalt/B&D consider the drill disposable, encouraging people to toss them in the landfull rather than replace the batteries. I'm sure I will be able to rebuild the packs for less than 1/2 that, but it leaves a bad taste...

Dave

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Who?

If the equipment is properly designed, it is only necessary to completely run the batteries down to refresh them a few times a year.

Running the battery down *every* time under load leads to cells being reverse charged and results in irrecoverable S/C cells!

news:rec.crafts.metalworking

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Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Your concept of "Running them down" goes too far. You switch battery packs as soon as it loses torque, and get it into the charger. DON'T overcharge, and always rotate all the batteries for even usage.

Show me ANY tool maker that sells the batteries for much less than that ratio. You can always buy a $20 chinese drill with an $8 battery pack and throw away several drills a year when something breaks off inside. Those $8 packs are made with low capacity Ni-Cads, as well.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

I have a couple of cheap £20 drills at different locations, apart from slightly disappointing torque they seem every bit as robust as the B&D drills. The first one I bought, at the time a spare battery pack was about £5, the second one a spare battery was included in the carry case for the whole price of £20.

Even when the B&D drill was new the £20 drill would always have enough charge to use while the B&D was recharging having self discharged over only a few weeks since last used!

Good for you. but the cheap drills are almost useless to me. All they are used for is scrapping obsolete PCs. For anything else I get out a corded drill, or use my floor model drill press.

BTW, if you guys think cordless tools are overpriced, the first one I saw was in the mid '60s and a new color TV cost less than the drill, and you could have bought a used service truck for less than a new battery.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

I buy cheap no name brands like (All trade) cordless drills, they come with 2 Batteries, charger, case, drills and unit for $19.95 at our local club. And when the bat's fail, I save the motor,gear head and chuck to use to make servo things like Ham radio tuning antenna's for the vehicals.

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B&D has been Chinese crap for years now, I quit buying their stuff a long time ago.

But who needs to buy their stuff?

My corded Black & Decker drill, variable speed but not reversible, was bought in December of 1975, for something like $30 (I can't remember the exact cost). The only thing I've had to do with it was replace the brushes in the early nineties. I've not needed to buy a drill since.

The B&D drill press adaptor I bought a few years later, that still works fine.

The B&D sabre saw I bought around 1977 still works fine.

I did buy another B&D drill, a similar model a couple of years ago for $3.00 at a garage sale. The price was just too good, and you never know when you might need a spare.

Michael

Which is why I buy the no-name brands for dirt cheap and pay a lot less

I do have a recently purchased B&D cordless drill that employs a 12 volt bat with extra bat and charger + carry case only because it was at my local club for cheap!. other than that! if I want cheap throw away crap i'd rather pay 19 bucks for a complete set up than pay 30+ bucks for a simply setup from B&D. since they are all made in the same place, I can't justify paying B&D that big mark up for the same crap that's made in the same place.

To many use to be American brands trying to push crap from china with their name on it. A lot of people don't read close enough in the label. Some may say, "Oh, but it's made to B&D specifications" is is wrong basically, what they do is have a chinese maker present them an example designed and tested by chinese engineers and B&D saids "Great" we don't even have to pay for an engineering team any more.

Oh well. I hope with the recent down fall of the stock market over there, people like B&D felt it.

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Real Programmers Do things like this.
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< lots deleted >

Many moons ago, one of my first cordless drills began to die slowly as its battery fled. In place of buying a new battery, I opted to shelve the unit and use a dewalt.

Much later, the old unit came off the shelf, and after some inspection of the battery procured from a garage sale for 50 cents, I ended up using some gel cells from a TV camera power pack. Some power electronics inside the now empty battery, and I had me one cheap power pack. The gel belt weighs in at 15 Pounds, provides 4 to

6 hours of juice. Battery death is about 1 in the past 10 years. Replace cost was $20 per module. Unit carries 15 modules in all, all supplying 12 Volts.

Sometimes you gotta fix what they will not.

As far as I can tell, the cheap £19.95 drills with spare batteries I bought were made in Germany, the Chinese made B&D drills are marginally better for the short time the batteries last.

On 1 Jun, 15:49, snipped-for-privacy@use.techsupport.link.on.my.website

why do people expect low volume goods to sell at the same prices pro rate as mass market goods? No use blaming B&D for the realities of business.

NT