On Jun 17, 9:58*am, "
wrote:
On Jun 17, 10:04*am, RicodJour wrote:

I'm interested in experimenting with trying to revive some old NiCd
batteries by zapping them and I ran across this on YouTube. *Good,
clear video about using two other good NiCd batteries to revive the
dead one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8hHLyXAyQ

R

I wonder if it works how much more life you get out of them.
I saw this a while back when I had a driver/drill pack that went
bad. * Finally decided that for $20 I could get new batteries on
Ebay and just rebuild it.

What the OP is talking about is using a low-impedance power source to
burn open the whiskers that sometimes form on older NICAD batteries,
especially when they are left unused and uncharged for long periods of
time. Once the cells start whiskering, they almost always are prone
for it to happen again, the best thing to prevent/stop this is to keep
them permanently on a trickle charger. I have some very old nicads,
perhaps 30+ years old, that I still use in some tools that I keep on
trickle chargers. I know I am using power to keep them charged, but
the convenience of always having the tools ready when I need them
outweighs the small cost. When they were new, they were very
expensive so that is another reason I hate to discard them.