Hey folks
I need some help from the community. I posted this over on Knots and no one there could help me. My 12V Li Milwaukee driver is in trouble because the batteries won’t charge. Here’s my problem, either both batteries died at the same time (and by died, I mean the charger says they are defective) or the charger died. The charger and batteries are about 1 year old and I’m not a heavy user so I have my suspicisions about both batteries dying together (very romantic though). Also, if I get close to the charger when it’s plugged in but NOT charging anything, i.e. no battery in the charger, it makes a quiet hissing noise. None of my other brands of chargers do that. So to avoid replacing either battery or charger without knowing which one is defective, I wonder if anyone out there has the same type of 12V Li charger (pic attached) and can listen to it for me and let me if yours talks to you too.
In return I’ll happily listen to my other tools for you! 🙂
Thanks in advance for any help.
Steve W.
Replies
Well, the "hissing" could be
Well, the "hissing" could be the smoke escaping, or it could be that it's just the (ultrasonic) high-frequency inverter that is at the heart of most of these things.
One thing to do is to check for bent contacts in either the charger or the batteries.
Unfortunately, I can't think of any reliable way to tell if it's charger or battery, other than to take your batteries to a store somewhere that sells the brand and ask if you can plug them in to see if they charge.
The Fix...well sort of
Per DanH's suggestion, I took one of the batteries to the local BigBox (where I had purchased it) and the guy at the rental counter let me try my battery in his charger. Worked fine! Ah-ha I said, Great. I took the battery home and just for fun, plugged it into my charger and it charged just fine. Arrrgh. So I put the other battery in and showed a fault. Placed the good battery in the charger and now, it too shows a fault.
I give up. I'm sending the charger and batteries back to Milwaukee (I just dug up the receipt and it's still under warranty).
But thanks for the suggestions!
Steve
Go to Home Depot, buy another kit.
Leave everything in plastic except the charger, and see if your batteries recharge.
After you are done, return the kit, just say you decided you didn't need it. Big Box return policies are AWESOME!
I'll add that it's possible (though not extremely likely) for a bad charger to damage batteries. Much less likely that a bad battery would damage a charger.
I think I'll try bring one of the batteries to the store I purchased the driver from and see if they'll let me test my battery in thier charger. Good idea. And if they say no, perhaps I'll buy a charger (and keep the receipt, hint hint).
Steve
They had a bad batch of batteries. Should be covered under warranty
I have on that does that also. I think it has more to do with voltage fluxualtions or something as it works fine in my house but some clients house I get the battery fault. I think it is a vomputer thing either in th ebatteries or the charger
I have the same set of batteries and charger. Both mine went bad at the same time. Also within a year. I live near a Milwaukee service center and took them out there. They tested them, said they were bad and gave me two brand new ones. Hopefully you will end up with two new ones in the mail as well. Good luck.