How to care for Li-ion batteries?
I have invested in the Hitachi 18v cordless system with the 6 Amphour batteries.
I have acquired a few tools over a few months. Everything is still under warranty.
All was well until the other week, when I found the batteries will not charge. One is now completely useless and the other will only hold a few minutes work worth of charge.
They have lost their "memory".
I am only using it for DIY stuff and some woodwork projects in the weekends, or briefly during the week. Although I have been rather busy lately so the tools have not sat idle for long either.
So basically light use for such tools - but not so infrequent as to be a problem.
The only instruction I saw was to quickly charge the batteries after draining them - which I did.
I keep the batteries in the shed but we haven't had the hot weather yet so there has been no extreme temperature to worry about.
The batteries are only a few months old. Almost new. I didn't count how many times I have charged them or used them in that time - but it has not been a great many times.
So I am perplexed as to what, if anything, I did wrong. :?
I did some research on the internet but they suggest things that I expect would invalidate the warranty and don't give me any insight it to why it might have happened in my case.
I want to return them under warranty but (a) did I do something wrong? (b) how to stop it happening again?
Could it be the charger?
Or are the new Hitachi 18V slide batteries known for QA problems?