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

"Neal" wrote in message

I do have a decent
multimeter , jI'm ust not sure how to go about the diagnostic testing.
Thanks a bunch for any guidance.

Put the lead on to the batter and take a reading. Put the leads on the
charger contacts and take a reading.

If you have a problem doing that, put the meter for sale on eBay.

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.

--
Free men own guns, slaves don't
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5357/

Edwin Pawlowski wrote:
"Neal" wrote in message


I do have a decent
multimeter , jI'm ust not sure how to go about the diagnostic testing.
Thanks a bunch for any guidance.


Put the lead on to the batter and take a reading. Put the leads on the
charger contacts and take a reading.

If you have a problem doing that, put the meter for sale on eBay.



Now, what I'd recommend doing is to use whatever bits of wire and bent
paperclips are required to put the meter (set on its current mode)in
series with the battery and its charger and see how much current the
charger is delivering to the battery when they're connected that way.

Start out on the highest current range of the multimeter and work your
way down to an on-scale reading.

If the measured charging current is reasonable, say numerically in the
range of 1/4 to 1/10 of the battery's amp hour rating, and you leave it
conected that way for an hour without the battery charging up enough to
make the tool do its thing, then it's the battery's fault.

If you measure zero charging current, then it's likely the charger, or
the battery is completely open circuited, which is highly unlikely.

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"Truth exists; only falsehood has to be invented."

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.

--
Free men own guns, slaves don't
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5357/

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.

Ed,
Thanks for the advice.
With a warm battery fresh out of the charger, I get a reading on it...of
pretty much nothing.
One the other hand, when I put the probes on the charger contacts, I get a
reading of about 1.5V. I'm not sure what the charger should be reading: so,
is this a dead charger, or a dead battery, or possibly both? Meter's fine ;-)
Thanks.


On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 23:39:37 -0400, Edwin Pawlowski wrote
(in article ):


"Neal" wrote in message

I do have a decent
multimeter , jI'm ust not sure how to go about the diagnostic testing.
Thanks a bunch for any guidance.

Put the lead on to the batter and take a reading. Put the leads on the
charger contacts and take a reading.

If you have a problem doing that, put the meter for sale on eBay.

Take a good look at the square black plug. Usually says the output voltage.
I'd guess 4 or 5 volts. You can usually read the terminals where the charge
stand touches the cordless device. The terminals should be near to the
voltage that's listed on the plug.

I did a quick Froogle search, these gadgets start at about $100, so it's
worth some trouble shooting.

--

Christopher A. Young
Do good work.
It's longer in the short run
but shorter in the long run.
..
..


"Neal" wrote in message
news5G2f.4384$Iq3.3297@trndny01...
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