Nick Hull wrote:
In article D5G2f.4384$Iq3.3297@trndny01, Neal
wrote:

I'm hoping someone here can advise me.
I have a Milwaukee Cordless Screwdriver #6539-1. It takes a smallish
rechargable battery: Milwaukee 2-4 Volt Battery Cat No. 48-11-0100.
When the battery is in the charger, the red charger status LED lights dimly,
but the battery has ZERO juice when removed.
How can I test to find wether the problem is with the battery or the battery
charger? I do not have a spare battery to confirm. I do have a decent
multimeter , jI'm ust not sure how to go about the diagnostic testing.
Thanks a bunch for any guidance.
Cheers, Neal


It might be a dendrite problem in the NiCads. Read the battery voltage,
flash with your car's 12 volt battery and read the voltage again. If it
came up to normal then try charging normally in the charger.

--
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Right, mostly in these cases the batteries have died; second most
likely with chargers that have wires to the unit is that flexing of the
wires breaks them internally, but sounds like you don't have this kind
of charger.

Re dendrites: little metal needle crystals precipitate out inside the
battery. Obviously, once these things short between the + and -, the
battery is dead. You can often blow them away, however, by hooking up a
higher voltage to the battery terminals very briefly (+ to +, - to -),
something on the order of 10X the battery voltage. Car battery would do
it, I typically just use a 9 volt alkaline with a radio shack 9 volt
battery connector providing two loose wires. Anyway, a brief zap with
this setup has a decent chance of resurrecting a dead Nicad. And that's
why you are supposed to store Nicads charged; if the battery is
charged, as soon as one of these little crystals forms and shorts it
out, the charge in the battery itself provides the current to blow the
dendrite up. No further user intervention required.