Thread: Old Cordless Drills - What to Do With Them?

E-waste sadly.

Even my poor old Makita18V cordless is headed that way.

I have taken a couple of the better ones and dismantled them and kept the chucks.
Sometimes you have to cut the chuck off the drill.

The chucks are useful to hold things like files, drills and counter sinking bits, especially in places to cramped for a regular drill.
e.g. reaming out a hole in a piece of sheet metal you have something to hold the bits

Hmmm, I got given an old Panasonic drill the other day but the body has gone all slimey and nasty and the batteries don't seem to last too long.

I believe they output around 200W so I was thinking of a motorised billy cart with a lead acid battery.

I cut off the battery "clip" on my old Makita & Ryobi 12v cordless drills and turned them into a corded 12v drill using some HD twin and a couple of alligator clips. Very handy while touring & camping when hooked up to a 12v 7.5ah SLA battery.

I did similar with an unknown brand drill, I use to use it for repairing tyres/punctures when I used to 4WD a lot. Handy to put in the odd tek screw also.
Kryn

What Mobyturns said.

You can also gut the battery case and wire a dedicated extension cord and plug. Several years ago someone posted their conversion of a Triton 18v drill to run off a transformer with a coiled extension cord wired into the battery pack (nice but heavy drill, the charger and batteries were a disaster).

You can also try 'reviving' the old batteries by putting them in a freezer for a day or two, it is supposed to work for Ni-Cd's and I've used it successfully on a Ni-Mh battery that wouldn't charge at all - over night in the fridge freezer and everything worked when thawed out.

My 14.4v cordless drill batteries run flat quickly after about 5 years of use, so I took the battery pack apart to find out what type of batteries they are.
Then went onto ebay and bought 24 new batteries for the 2 battery packs I have. The originals were 1300mAH NiCd so I bought 2200mAH for a bit extra capacity.
I soldered the tabs of the batteries together in the same order and shape as the originals, refitted the pack together and put on charge and hey presto!!
My cordless drill is good as new again.
Be sure to get the same type of battery as the original, ie NiCd for NiCd or NiMh for NiMh so the charger will charge the battery safely.

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

I cut off the battery "clip" on my old Makita & Ryobi 12v cordless drills and turned them into a corded 12v drill using some HD twin and a couple of alligator clips. Very handy while touring & camping when hooked up to a 12v 7.5ah SLA battery.

Works very well.

Its actually quite common amongst yachties to convert a 12-volt drill to a 12-volt corded drill that uses the ship's power. Ditto for caravanners and 4WD'ers.

BUT, about three years ago, NiCad stick batteries on my Makita 9.6-volt drill died. Replacement batteries more expensive than a new drill. Google found some very affordable batteries in Germany. Still working well.


Cheers

Graeme

I've a friend who set up a home THEATRE in his lounge room. Complete with seating out of a picture theatre with curtains to open the screen, using the remains of a cordless drill to operate them. He's an electronics engineer, so that wouldn't have been a problem for him to set it up.
Kryn

Originally Posted by KBs PensNmore

I've a friend who set up a home THEATRE in his lounge room. Complete with seating out of a picture theatre with curtains to open the screen, using the remains of a cordless drill to operate them. He's an electronics engineer, so that wouldn't have been a problem for him to set it up.
Kryn

Hmmmm, I wonder if you could do a foot operated drill powered bench vise? Could be handy when you need three hands.

You do it and we'll watch the WIP Would be very handy, always have that problem also.
Kryn