DIYbanter - View Single Post - Dewalt battery charger problem and possible heads up

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On Wed, 8 Dec 2010 04:50:58 -0500, (Jerry - OHIO)
wrote:

I had some 9.6 Maketa's that would kick the charger off so I hooked my
bike trickle charger up to it and ran like hell, hour later it was up to
full charge. I didn't know what 12 volt would do to a 9.6 ??
But it blew the crap out of a 7.2 after six hours.

NiCds are charged with a constant current so at least in theory one could use
a single charger for all voltages (a 12V battery is just 10 1.2V cells in
series, a 9.6 is eight...). The current used is a function of capacity, so
smaller batteries may use a different current. This doesn't work with Lithium
batteries, however, because they're charged with a constant voltage. The
charger has to know what voltage to supply the battery.