I have a horrible time with battery life. Charge them up, they run down within a few minutes of light work. If I charge and let them sit a few days, you can hardly run a 1" screw in.

Had Ryobi, Dewalt etc. Any secrets I'm missing?

Li-Ion are you friends. I charge mine up and they can sit for weeks and are ready to go. I got so fed up with Nicad tools that I went out and bought a new Porter Cable 20v Li-Ion set....problem solved. They will die suddenly without much warning but my drill has a battery life indicator.

Li-ion is the answer.
I have had excellent results from both Rigid and DeWalt.

I went with the RIDGED brand from Home Depot. They have a life time warranty on their batteries right along with the equipment. Just remember to register it on line when you get it. Li-Ion are the way to go right now.

Yeah, probably how to take care of your batteries. Don't charge 'em hot, don't charge 'em cold. Don't run them down in a light or something similar that will absolutely drain them down. Nicads lose about one-percent/day so if you let it sit 2mo, guess what. It is what it is.

I finally developed a system to keep my batteries stored and rotated through a charger so they never sat and ran down on their own.

Check what you have with a voltmeter off the charger. A new 18V Dewalt nicad will read 21V+ off the charger and will read about 20.5 a few hours later. Run a battery hard in something like a circular saw until the motor starts to bog, then check the voltage. That will give you an idea of what a functional voltage is. I'll bet your batteries that are dying quick will only charge to about 16-17V or so.

Youtube have videos of guys who've "zapped" bad nicads with a wire welder, YMMV. In theory this will boil the sulfate off the cells.

I just order new innards from Gulf Coast Battery on ebay. $88 for two 18V delivered.

They are spendy, and won't live as long as a cared for nicad.

Milwaukee M18 Fuel 1/2" drill. Lithium Ion battery. By far the best cordless tools I have bought.

And?

Ni cad is yesterday's news. Get with the program.

Li-ion. Look for the newer 4AH batteries.

I like the Bosch tools I have. The biggest thing to compare isn't the drill itself, but the batteries.

+1. Milwaukee

The brushless Milwaukee fuel 18v is the best thing going right now.

The web sight garagejournal.com ( like 24fire, but for tool nuts) will give you all the info you need.

+2

Interesting. I just switched over to LI this week. At the advice of several of my home builder buddies I went from Dewalt to Makita. Amazon beat Home Depots price by 50% for the same deal and also upgraded my batteries to the higher capacity models. Win win for me.

I finally wised up and bought Milwaukee M18 tools and they are the bomb!! Their fuel line of tools are awesome!!

Yeah-I have an older Craftsman NiCad that won't hold a charge more than a couple weeks. The Dewalt Li-ion tool keeps a charge so long I have to wonder what the time frame actually might be..

I bought a 1/2" Bosch DDS181 with lithium-ion when both ni-cad batteries died in my 1/2" Makita. it was on sale at Lowes withcame with an exrtra battery. It cost $30 less for the drill with 3 batteries than 2 replacement batteries for the Makita. The lithium-ion batteries run longer, don't discharge when idle and recharge much quicker than the ni-cad batteries.

My sister is a tool dealer. When I asked her best salesman, a couple of months ago, which was best - red or yellow - he brought me out a Milwaukee Fuel. STOUT drill!

I wasn't aware Rigid had a lifetime warranty

I bought the M18 Hammer Drill and Impact Lithium-ion combo kit and they are the best cordless tools I have bought as well. The batteries last a long long time between charges. They also charge very quickly. The kit came with a battery for each tool and an extra battery. I picked up the jobsite radio later and that too has been really nice.

Don't use a cordless drill where a corded one will do.

Milwaukie drill and hammer drill set. AWESOME! Also got the reciprocating saw for cutting pipe. Amazing amazing tools, use mine daily.

True. But, a cared for Ni-Cad has to be cycled almost daily.

I went with the Ryobi line. I have a drill, drill driver, spotlight, work light, LED lantern, sawsall, jig saw, blue tooth radio, and circular saw. Home Depot had a deal on two high capacity Li-ion batteries for $99, so now I have about 5 batteries and they seem to be lasting very well.

I'd say every 2-3wks or so. Like I said, they loose about 1%/day so a 20% discharge with a recharge should give a decent service life without the cells sulfating.

Actually it's better to run the batteries down all the way--they are only good for a finite number of cycles.

BS, that is what destroys them. Been using nicads for 30yrs and learned the hard way. When a drill motor bogs, it's past time to recharge, AFTER the battery cools off.

I'll pile on - this ^^^^^

I recently went through this same thing. Settled on Milwaukee for both drill and circular saw. Thinking I need the cordless jigsaw as well.........

Started with a Fuel 1/4" impact and that flat created a new disease, almost no use for a compressor now.


Edit: I have 19.2v Craftsman that seems close to ten years old but there are a dead cell or two in the pack. I watched a bunch of videos on rebuilding the battery packs and have Tenergy sub-c's bookmarked to order, may be worth some research.

You're doing it wrong. But don't take my word for it.
https://www.batterystuff.com/kb/articles/battery-articles/what-the-heck-is-a-nicd-battery.html

Get a Makita Li-ion

All my tools are 18v De Walt and I don't want to replace them. Am I stuck with De Walt Ni Cads or is there an upgrade that runs in them?

i have used nothing but panosonic cordless drills for over 10 years now. in 10 years the batteries are finally getting weak.best tools i've ever had. the local tool man that does service on ever brand you can think of talked me into buying them. being a remodeling contractor i use them everyday. he said that back then they had way better batteries then anything else.i hate dewalt cordless drills for 2 reasons. the variable speed trigger in them takes off about twice as fast as my panasonic drills do andd you can easily run a screw bit thru your hand when tryin to start screws in anything hard.plus dewalt batteries suck they won't last half as long as panasonics do on one charge.

yup ! ...i use mine /m12/m18 tools every day ...u can press the button on the battery and check the power left …BEFore u climb the ladder ....u can get the tools on ebay one at a time ..cheap to !!

u do ....its great!! I use to be in retail for near on 20 years,been to all the trade shows...Milwaukee rep had the best take away line ever! ....sorry ,wee don't make home owner tools-industail only

The warranty process gets mixed reviews from what I've read. Plenty on google about it.

Lots of votes for lithium ion batteries. I find them useless in cold weather as they won't charge and their tendency of simply quitting without warning is a real bonus when you've just scaled a ladder and are holding a dozen screws in your mouth, a vent termination in your left hand and a drill in your right. Half a screw installed later and it's time to climb back down and get a different battery - if it hasn't been too cold for it to take a charge.

There are options-

link

I am at that point. My old DeWalt 18V niCad set up has given good service, but to buy two new batteries is more than I want to spend on old tech.
Looking at the 20 volt lithium outfit

Home Depot has a promo going till end of the month. Buy certain Milwaukee, dewalt or makita sets and get up to $150 in free accessories or bare tools.

if anyone has milwaukee 18volt drills and would like a port-a-band that uses the same battery i have a like new one with the hardcase that i'd sell for 125.00 plus shipping. thats half price.

Based on a sample of one, I fall in the "leave 'em discharged" school of thought. About 12-13 years ago, I bought a DeWalt 18V drill driver that came with two NiCad batteries. For no particular reason I used and recharged the same battery for about ten years, until it wouldn't hold a charge long enough to run a couple of screws.

I had gone so far as to mark the one I was using so I could "save" the other one. When I charged the previously-uncharged batter I figured it would be bad just because of age. Here I am about three years later still using my "saved" 13-year old battery. My drill driver receives occasional homeowner use. I charge the battery either when I know I'm going to be away from the charger to drive a lot of screws, or when the battery gets weak.

+4 or is it +5 on the Milwaukee M18

I still say someone needs to make a conversion kit for all these cordless drills where you take the actual batteries out of the unit and replace it with components for a DC converter with a short chord and plug on the end so a guy could use hiss cordless drill as a corded drill when he wants to. Personally I think all the drill mfr should provide a converter as part of their drill package.

+1 on the Bosch....I have one....the Batteries last for ever...Pick it up after 3 months without a charge and it is still ready to go.

If you're driving screws, get an impact driver!!
They don't break screws or driver bits like a drill does and are much easier to control!

Do I have to come back to this thread and start knocking heads? Milwaukee ! My dad would say g dam it what the heeeelll is wrong wit u , then a smack to the back of the head sumed it up ....😁

As I stated earlier I ditched my Ryobi stuff after suffering through years of poor battery life and such and changed over to the Milwaukee line. Granted I've got a great friend who is an engineer with Milwaukee and got my tools at cost but even if I had to pay regular prices it would've been well worth it. There's just no comparison between the two brands. He sent me a newly released metal cutting circular saw and you cant believe how that thing goes through metal. Like a hot knife through butter!!

SWEET BABY! Hadda go to HD this weekend anyway for new carpet in a bedroom. Think I'll just tooodley-ooo over to the 'tools' area and see what happens to fall into my cart...

I've been using Dewalt 20V everyday for the past year. Awesome tools.m durable, battery lasts awhile. Buy them factory direct not at a big box store. They're not the same.