Thread: Festool charger caution?

Well, I hope that is wrong. Chargers are often plugged on the same circuit as saws or small DCs. I should think there would be thousands of bad chargers reported by now.

Thanks for that Groggy,used mine last night for the C12 drill to recharge 2 batteries had it plugged in with a twin GPO with radio in the other.

Costly exercise having to replace a charger.Something to bear in mind that is if a fluctuating current draw is responsible .

Cheers

Just something I heard but can't verify. Still, it won't hurt to charge on a circuit without sudden draw until it can be clarified.

Greg there would not be very many that do not charge them on separate circuits.

Look at all the guys on site who just plug them in on the biulders pole and you have compressors, dropsaws and other tools going all the time.

I think the guy may be having a lend of your mate.

Get him to go back and ask for a more genuine reason, ie the tool stuffed up or the battery is faulty etc.

Well, this question intrigued me so I did some follow-up.


For the charger to be affected by current surge it would have to be hooked in series with another device. If a charger and a saw are plugged into the same GPO and the saw is started, the current draw to the saw will immediately go from 0 to about 10 amps then drop back to somewhere closer to 0.5 to 1.5 amps.


However, because the saw is not in series the current draw on the charger remains the same (as you would expect). So the only variation is to voltage. The only way to get a current surge through the charger is to have a fault condition or a bad battery loaded, either way you would expect a professional tool to protect itself from these occurrences.


The relevant point of this discussion is that the devices connected to a single electrical circuit are connected in parallel and will therefore have the same voltage across each device but the current flow in each of the parallel arms is peculiar to that device, so the effect of a current surge through one device will not be seen by any other devices on the circuit.


Electrical theory says that when the current increases voltage decreases and vice versa, but this is only evident when the power supply is limited. The household circuits have a power supply that is so large that any voltage drop in response to the current surge would be undetectable and could not have an effect on the drill charger.


So, bottom line, it appears that the reason given is unlikely and we need not worry about surge on standard circuits. The most likely reason for the unit to have expired is an internal component failure.



Thanks to all who commented.