Re: DeWalt Drill Trigger Fwd/Rev Switch failing

;-)

Could it be the brushes if there is no direct correlation to doing / moving anything?

Cheers, T i m

We had a couple Dewalts at work with the same issue; after a bit of searching online, the fix was dirt buildup had dislodged a retaining clip on the fwd/rev selector.

Can't remember the site (sorry), but it should be searchable. Disassemble the f/r assembly, clean and reassemble.

HTH

All my power drills and drivers are DeWalt: DCD777 20v drill DCF787 20v impact driver DCD710 12V drill DCD710 12V drill in bad shape DCF886 20v driver (blown speed control) There are also several drills and drivers that I bought for parts. In general, I'm happy with DeWalt drills and drivers. However, there are some models that have specific problems and should be avoided. I don't have a list handy.

The small DCB120 12v 1.3A-hr and DCB207 20v 1.3A-hr packs are not very good compared to the larger battery packs. The basic problem is that the BMS (battery management system) and charge balancer is in the charter. That means that the BMS battery connections go to each cell. If there is any resistance, or connection problem, between the charger and the battery pack, the BMS won't equalize the charge between cells. One or more cells will die from overcharge, while the remaining cells will survive. The few that I've rebuilt, invariably have one or two cells out of 3 (12v) or 4 (20v) cells blown. I've tested the cells in the bad pack and confirmed that the remaining cells are almost as good as new. Cleaning the contacts seems to reduce the problem. I had to build a minimally abrasive tool to clean the battery contacts.

I haven't done any further investigation due to lack of time (and lack of a clean workbench). The following is speculation. My guess(tm) is that the charger is setup to charge the battery pack to 100% as fast as safely possible. Workers in the trades don't want to be juggling tiny battery packs to make it through the day. If they have to charge, they want instant results. Slow charging doesn't sell well. The advertised charge time is 90 minutes for both 12v and 20v packs which is a charge rate of approximately: 90min / 60min/hr = 1.5C That's higher than the maximum recommended 1C (1.3amp in 1 hr) charge rate. That's what is probably killing the cells. Since I have more chargers than I need, I was going to butcher one to operate at a greatly reduced charge rate. I was also going to modify my Sky B6 imax balanced charger, which I use for charging drone battery packs, to charge the DeWalt battery packs. The plan is to reduce the charge rate and to stop charging at 4.1V (about 91%) instead of the usual

How to replace the cells in a 12V Max lithium ion battery pack

Not me, unless you include gluing the chuck in place with a mixture of sap, drywall, sawdust, dirt, and sand. A solvent bath, followed by a chuck teardown, fixed the chuck.

I broke the tongue off one large 20v battery pack by dropping it. I glued it back together and lived happily ever after.

Talk to your friendly local 3D printing shop:

Lots of reviews on YouTube:

Makita might be slightly better but I like the banana slug yellow DeWalt color.

Great parts resource, I'll look for that. Thanks.

I had great battery voltage and the battery ran the motor directly with great power, no matter what I did with the trigger and fwd/rev switch no V came out of the trigger assembly. Sorry I didn't mention that earlier.

Thanks, I'll give that a go.

They're just one of many DeWalt parts dealers online. However, the parts are rather expensive so I prefer to buy broken power tools on eBay and cannibalized them for the parts I need. That's one reason why I have so many DeWalt drills and impact drivers. I buy one for parts, which can be used to fix several others.