According to Dave Martindale :
writes:
I was originally looking to buy a Dust Buster type
device but all the consumer ones have built in
rechargeable batteries....such that once the battery
dies you have to throw away the whole unit. Very
wasteful!!

Not necessarily. If you live in a decent-size city, there are probably
several places that rebuild battery packs from cells. They weld the
cells with straps in the same shape as the original pack. Just take
apart the DustBuster, take the battery pack to the rebuilder, and pick
up a new pack in a few days. I've replaced the battery pack in my
DustBuster at least once this way.

Or, buy the cells and do the replacement yourself. While the
strap welders are more convenient, you can do the same with
a soldering gun, or a sufficiently heavy duty soldering iron.
The one trick is to scrape/roughen the soldering points on the
battery with a dremel or sand paper or emery stick before
soldering, and don't take so long that the battery gets hot.

About 2 months ago, I rebuilt:

1) a dustbuster (3 cell)
2) 4.8v makita drill (quite old with an internal pack)
3) 2.4v electric screwdriver (2 cell)

Previously I had a battery rebuilder rebuild a 12v, 10 cell non-XRP
DeWalt (DeWalt manufactured, rebranded device, 1.7AH) pack. I have
at least one more to do over the next little while - this one I
may do myself.

One of the advantages of doing this is that you can pick better
batteries. All of these tools are running _better_ than new.

The cells I'm using are 2.2AH. The Dewalt was 1.7AH originally.

Note: while battery packs in things like Dewalts _look_ like C
cells, they're actually not. "SubC" ("SC") seems to be the most
common.

Things get confusing when you realize how many standards
there a

http://www.powerstream.com/Size.htm
--
Chris Lewis,

Age and Treachery will Triumph over Youth and Skill
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.