Will a universal Craftsman charger work with my 15.6V drill?

July 1, 2008 9:57 AM

Will a universal Craftsman charger work with my 15.6V drill?

It's a 15.6 V cordless drill, numbers on the drill are G0330, model number 315.114630. There's an image of the drill on ebay: here.

The battery number is 130234027. My other charger stopped charging and I forgot about the warranty and was pissed off so I threw it away. Now I have the drill with two batteries but can't charge them. I can buy a new 15.6 V charger, but it's not worth it to pay 40 dollars for the charger when I can pay 80 for a brand new 18V drill. I just want a cheap charger that will keep this thing going for a while until I end up buying a new set of tools.

The 18V universal chargers don't mention this battery, but I feel like it would work anyways, but I'd hate to spend 20 bucks and have it not work. Does anybody have any ideas?

posted by ets960 to Home & Garden (2 answers total)

I think you are saying that a 'universal' charger is cheap enough to buy, where the exact replacement isn't worth the bother - you want to know if the 'universal' will work.

Many of the craftsman universal chargers I googled up say "Only charges Ni-Cad batteries". This may be an issue, though I have questions about how different charging NiCd and NiMH really is. For example, What's the difference between a NiMH battery charger and a NiCd battery charger. Regardless, you should know what kind of battery you have before proceeding.

In general, charging batteries is a problematic process. Poking around the rest of that linked FAQ is as good a reference as any on why. All that said, a 15.6V charger should be electrically useful as a charger for 15.6V batteries.

A warning though. Lithium ion batteries are quite volatile. I don't think you'll find a lithium ion battery pack marked 15.6V, so I don't think it applies here, but.. For practical purposes, I'd recommend not substituting chargers on lithium ion battery packs unless you have carefully verified the safety of such substitution based on your own original research.

And then there is the mechanical interface.. I've no idea if the 'universal' charger will fit the terminals of your batteries or not..
posted by Chuckles at 8:37 PM on July 1, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks for the reply- The battery that I am talking about is a NiCd, so I'm not too concerned about that, but as far as fit I'm not sure. Also, I'm assuming that the chargers have circuitry in them to set the voltage correctly depending on each type of battery, (don't want 18V into a 9.6V battery, it could blow it up). Because of that I am assuming that this will not work. I am going to buy a cheap 15.6V charger that is supposed to fit with my batteries.

Thanks again.
posted by ets960 at 6:04 AM on July 2, 2008