CUCC Expedition Handbook

Drill Battery Charging

Instructions for charging

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  • If the battery has insulation tape on it (red or earth) it won't charge on the Makita standard charger and the Balance/RC charger should be used. Go to RC charger.

    • Using Makita charger

    1. Make sure charger is powered (flashing green LED).
    2. Plug batt into Makita charger. It should start charging.
    3. Look at the LEDs for status - the legend is printed on the charger. If it flashes 'broken battery' (flashing red and gren LED) at you after a few seconds, use the yellow Pro-power RC charger instead.
    4. Eventually it should show '100%' (steady green LED) (in about 1 hour max). You are done.

    Using Pro-Power (or Accucell 6) RC charger

    1. Make sure charger is powered (display lit up)
    2. Connect charger to battery (either hardboard adaptor or empty Makita base adaptor). Check polarity is correct with hardboard adaptor.
    3. Check display says 'Lion' or 'Lipo' and '14.4V' and '3A' and 'CHARGE'. Hold down 'start/enter' button (on right). It will do a battery check.
    4. If it shows '4' as the number of cells, then press 'start/enter' again. Charging will start (fan comes on, display changes). If it shows anything else like 'polarity reversed' or 'connection break' then fix the connection to the battery. If it shows '3' as number of cells it is probably knackered, but possibly can be coaxed back into action. Find a battery expert - don't just use the charger anyway.
    5. Once it beeps and says 'FULL' (flashing) then you are done (should be less than 2 hours). Display shows number of mAh put in in bottom right. Should be a number like 250 for each hole drilled (between 50 and 2900 depending how discharged it was).

    Can I tell if a battery is already charged?

    Simplest it try to charge it again and find that it says it is done in a couple of minutes. This may waste a 'life' on batteries that still work on the Makita charger. Checking it on the RC charger will not waste a life. It will quickly rise to 16.4V, and the current drop to 0.1A or so. That indicates a full pack. It will tell you so after a while (1-5 mins).

    What sort of batteries are they

    The drill batts are 4S2P 14.4V lithium ion packs (8 18650 cells: 4 in series, each being a parallel pair). This means that they are charged as 4-cell packs, to 4.1V per cell-pair. They can be charged at up to 3A rate. Battery 1 has connector wired as balance connector. No other packs have this yet (2017).