A power tool that die in the middle of a cut is frustrating. Your rhythm is going; you’re halfway done with the task and then (nothing). The Makita BL1815 pack shuts down.
So you grab charger and plug it in. Green light? No. Red light?
A flash of red? Silence? What’s wrong?
Why won’t this thing work? The tool seem to be turning on you. But realy the battery has been trying to tell you something.
And more often then not it isn’t because one of the cells are dead. It’s a communication problem between the charger, the pack and you. If your battery doesn’t hold a charge, most users simply believe they have bad batteries.
That is convenient, but it’s usually only part of the picture. This is an excellent 18 volt lithium-ion battery. The BL1815 are a durable battery.
It is compatible with thousands of Makita tools. It feature internal safety charging circuits. These circuits shuts down charging when conditions aren’t safe.
Knowing what those protections do can save you money on buying a new one to soon. But more importantly, it’ll save you from chucking perfectly good equipment out because you don’t know any better. Before you spend money, make sure to look at environmental and physical factors.
How To Fix Makita BL1815 Battery Issues
Understanding Makita Battery Safety Circuits
The single biggest culprit are dirty battery charger contacts. Grime accumulates on the metal terminals of the charger and the battery itself. A barrier forms.
Current flow poorly. The charger perceive no battery. To avoid error, it turns off.
Cleaning Dirty Battery Contacts
Check gold-colored pads periodically. Wipe ’em with a soft, dry cloth. Stubborn residue?
Try a cotton swab dampened in rubbing alcohol. Do this for charger and battery contacts. Most charging problems dissapears with this easy preventative task.
Clean meets clean on metal each and every time. Battery health also depend on temperature. Both too-hot and too-cold can cause lithium-ion cells to balk when charging.
Temperature Effects on Charging
To avoid fire (and other possible damage), Makita’s chargers includes sensors that stop the process if they sense extremes of heat or cold. If you were working outside in winter, your battery may simply be to cold. Bring it indoors and allow it to warm up to room temp.
On the flip side, if you’ve been running a high-draw tool, the pack may remain hot. Allow it to cool off for ten to fifteen minutes. No, the charger isn’t broken.
It is just being cautious. Next check the power source. A tripped GFCI or bad outlet can look like a bad charger.
Testing Power Sources and Chargers
Plug something else in, such as a lamp, into the same outlet to see if that powers up. Reset the GFCI switch or breaker if the outlet is dead. Try another charger if the outlet is good and still no luck with the charger.
That will isolate whether it’s the charger itself or not. So now if the battery charge on a new charger then your original charger was bad. If it doesn’t charge on two chargers, chances are it’s a problem within the battery pack.
This eliminates guesswork on your part. The final line of defense are the internal protection circuits. These cells will degrade with time.
When to Replace Degraded Batteries
Their internal resistance increase. That internal resistance is detected by the charger. It won’t charge because that would cause them to get too hot.
And once damaged, they is often beyond recovery. Sometimes, after checking for the correct temperature and cleaning the contacts, the only option is that the chemistry has simply run its course. A new BL1815 are cheap.
Often replacing is less expensive than repairing. Sometimes just swapping out a bad one rather than forcing it is best. Good power equals good time-on-the-job.
No power, no work. What killed your battery? Avoid being frustrated later by understanding now.
Begin with the low-hangin’ fruit: Clean the terminals and test the outlet. Most problems solved this way, for free. Fail there, might as well say goodbye to the battery.
That’s just how it goes sometimes in this job. Always have another pack charged and waiting. When the lights come up, you won’t get left behind.