How to boost your Dremel battery.

[ChipRite]

I was getting frustrated with the short battery life on my Dremel Minimite and opened up the battery and found that it used 4 AA batteries of only 700maH. I replaced those with new batteries of 2100maH and now it has a life of 3 times longer. Maybe this will help someone.
Regards
Chiprite

[burnman]

Excellent tip. I think I'll try that.

[souchie]

Please explain thre process of how to change the batteries,my dremel batteries are connected together and would it be less expensive to buy a new dremel ,there only $19.95 at Wally World.

[J.T.Window]

Check out Home Depot for a golf club/cleat cleaning kit by Dremel. I've bought them on sale for $9. The battery pack comes apart and holds 4 AA's.

[burnman]

I did pull appart my dremel battery the other day. It does look like they are batteries, however, they are welded together at one pole and don't have the same type of ends. I'm wondering if it is still possible to do this mod in this type of battery case.

[jonnyques]

Chiprite Did you put in Nicads or Ni-MH batteries? Im thinking the charger is set up for only one type. I would expect it to me Nicads. Just wondering if you have had charging problems?

[johnnyone]

Try the new dremell with the lithium battery it last a long long time...

[ChipRite]

Hi,
I had had some queries on this, so here is more detail. The problem is that the older and cheaper drills only come with nicads and they do not have the staying power of todays latest camera batteries. Once you have the battery case open, check which way round the batteries are inserted. My case has the positive and negative marked. The existing batteries have flat side on both the pos and neg side and there are two sets of 2 cells in series with a small strap at the top. The Dremel switches all four in series (4.8v) for fast speed and puts the two sets in parallel (2.4v) for slow speed. Just lay two new batteries next to each other in opposite directions and tape together. Now just carefully and quickly solder a bridge on one end to connect the two cells, a thin bit of wire will do. The foam pad then just goes over this to secure the fit.
Insert them in the case and make sure that each set's free ends are in a hole marked pos + and neg - for each cell.
The replacements have a normal raised positive and this fits in the existing hole. If you have problems with this just put a small plastic washer on the end to keep it at the same level as the other neg side. My Dremel switches easily over this even with it being slightly uneven.
Yes, I fitted Ni-MH in place of the nicads, but have not noticed any charging problems yet, it seems to work, but cannot comment on the longer term. This can easily fixed by charging the batteries as seperate cells and using a clip on bridge instead of soldering or if someone can tell me how to get the charger open without breaking it I will have a look at it.
Regards
Chiprite

[Delta Kits]

Hmmm...

Good luck with that!

[StarQuest]

I hate to sound somewhat sarcastic...... but why are you spending this much time to rework ni-cad battery's on some outdated dremel tool to convert to lithium when you could provide one or two more repairs for the same time you wasted trying to re-engineer something obsolete?

Dremels are cheap! The one I presently use... cost me $69 at Home Depot and I only have to charge it once every 25-30 days. Right now, I love it but when something better comes along I'll probably dump it! Don't be cheap with tools in this biz. It just never pay's off in the long run.