A cordless screwdriver greatly simplifies the installation of fasteners, especially since it is not tied to an outlet. you can work even on the street or in rooms where there is no electricity. At the same time, one of the most important components of such an aggregate is a charger, because in many respects the degree of ease of use of the device depends on it.
What it is?
A screwdriver battery charger is a device that allows you to make up for battery energy losses caused by tool use. Due to the ability to charge the battery many times, the battery itself can have a relatively small size and capacity, if only the number of recharge cycles is large, and the charger provides a high speed of restoration of the initial charge.
All chargers can be globally divided into 2 classes: built-in and remote. In the first case, there is no need to specifically remove the battery for charging. a cable with an electric plug is attached directly to the tool body (or even attached to it on a permanent basis), which is quite convenient. Remote chargers are a separate mechanism that involves removing the battery from the screwdriver’s body, inserting it into a special clip, and the latter has the same cable with a plug and is plugged into an outlet. Each of the solutions has its own advantages and disadvantages, but more on that later.
If the above division into classes does not fundamentally affect the operation of the mechanism, then matching the type of charger to the type of battery is critical. The fact is that batteries for electric tools even today are available in several types, each of which has its own operating features. If the charger does not meet the required parameters, this can lead to very rapid battery damage. In order to understand what criteria a charger should have, we briefly consider the features of all the main types of batteries.
Video: Charge Battery with Charger From Screwdriver
- Nickel Cadmium Batteries today they are already quite rare. their popularity falls due to many factors, among which the toxicity of the contents, the ability to quickly self-discharge, high weight with a relatively low charge, and also the "memory effect". The last criterion means that the battery must always be first fully discharged, and then fully charged, if this rule is not respected, its capacity, already low, will begin to decline literally before our eyes. Perhaps the only huge plus of this type of battery is its ability to work normally at any low temperature. At the same time, they are also able to withstand high loads, because chargers for them are often made with the ability to charge as quickly as possible. this is very important, since you always need to charge from 0% to 100%.
- Nickel-Metal Hydride Batteries are considered an improved version of nickel-cadmium. defects are generally repeated, but they are all expressed to a much lesser extent. In addition, the contents of such batteries are not visible toxic components. The advantages are also very similar to those of the batteries of the previous type, because these batteries are already much more common, and the chargers for both types are very similar. The only indicator in which metal hydride power supplies are worse than cadmium is cost.
- Lithium ion batteries rightly considered the most modern and the best from the technical side. They are devoid of most of the shortcomings of the above batteries, for example, they are lightweight with a significant amount of charge, self-discharge by a few percent for a month of inactivity, completely devoid of a "memory effect". For a long time they were criticized for a somewhat accelerated discharge when working in freezing conditions, but in recent years this problem has also been gradually solved. True, there are still drawbacks, and the highest cost is far from the only one. So, such a battery is extremely undesirable to discharge completely. after that it may not restore its original capacity, although the plus is that you can recharge it at any time due to the lack of a “memory effect". Another problem is the likelihood of the battery exploding if it overheats from overcharging, so the charger for such a battery must be equipped with a microcontroller.