On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 17:48:44 GMT, "Geoff Norfolk" wrote:

Anyone any suggestions for getting longer life out of NiCd drill batteries.
Mine always seem to expire after a couple of years or is this normal life? I
only use the drill every couple of weeks for perhaps 10 minutes work and
only recharge when its completely flat. When I've opened up a battery pack,
I usually find one or 2 of the 10 cells is really low on voltage, the
others being on about 1.2volts.

Geoff.

If a cell reads zero volts, it has probably dendrited - whiskers of metal form and short the cell.
These can often be recovered by passing a very brief, heavy current (10-30 amps for a C-size cell
for a second or 2 max) through it.