General tips to keep your rechargeable battery in good condition

• Completely discharge the battery pack before recharging it, this will help to limit memory problems.
• Do not overcharge the battery pack, certainly no longer than 24 hours.
• The use of a good quality charger that does not continue to deliver current to the battery after it is completely charged is recommended, this will avoid overcharging.
• Do not leave a completely run down battery in a device that is turned on, this can cause cell reversal.
• Unless you have a charger that is properly designed for fast charging, it is better not to fast charge a battery pack.

Nicad & Nimh Cell Memory Problems

If you recharge the battery pack before you have fully run it down on a continuous basis, the battery cells will start to remember only the time you used it for. Besides limiting the working time it will also reduce the overall life cycle of the battery pack.

What actually happens during this process is that the “GEL” crystal within the cell gets misaligned and to get rid of this, you have to realign them. The only way to do this is to cycle the battery by running it down completely every so often and to fully recharge the pack.

Basically the two easiest ways to accomplish this, is to completely run the battery pack flat every time you use it before recharging. However this presents a problem when you only have one battery pack and need to do more work. Most people immediately put the battery pack on charge, which is exactly the wrong thing to do. You should always first let the battery cool down completely before recharging it. Never recharge a warm battery because it will never charge to full capacity and it also helps to reduce the overall life cycle of battery cells. Or if you only used the tool for a short period and there is still a lot of capacity left, it is best to leave it and next time use until totally run down. If however you are worried that there may not be enough capacity left to do the next job and recharge the pack and this happens on a fairly regular basis, then every 6 to 8 weeks you should run it flat, wait till it has cooled down completely and only then fully recharge it.

Obviously we do not want to sit there holding in the trigger until it has completely run down. You can use a small clamp on the trigger of the tool, set it to about ½ speed, not too slow or too fast, this is to avoid overheating problems, put the unit to the side and let it run down whilst you are doing something else. When it has run down, let it cool down and then recharge it fully. If you make a habit of doing this, it will certainly help to reduce the memory problems However do not leave it without recharging for too long as cells polarity reversal can occur.