delus
Newly Enlightened
1. What is it?
The Makita ADP03 Automatic Refreshing Adapter is one part of the larger 194918-6 Battery-Checker System (European catalog number) shown in the photo below (Photo shamelessly stolen from MakitaUK.com).
It is not a battery charger by itself, it must be used in conjunction with a stock charger you already have.
It has been a thing since the year 2010. The manual is here https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1237881/Makita-Adp03.html?page=5#manual
The complete Battery Checker System, the ADP03 is one part, shown on the lower left.
Top
Bottom Made in Japan. Not sure why, but I edited out the serial number.
Lower control panel, showing the condition button on right.
2. What does it do?
It has three modes. Notice the upper and lower display panels.
A. Normal Charge. The lights on the upper panel operate similarly to chargers you have seen before.
B. Automatic Refresh: If a battery is inserted and the ADP03 detects that a refresh is required for this battery, it will automatically initiate a refresh mode. A much quicker version of mode C is initiated. Lights on the lower panel become active. No capacity information is displayed.
C. Conditioned Refresh: Press the button and the conditioning cycles begin. A series of charge/discharge cycles are performed, with specific amperage/voltage/time algorithms designed to "restore useful service lifetime" to Makita lithium or NiMH packs (Additional adapter required for NiMH packs). The conditioning process may take between 4 and 10 hours. Battery packs with larger Amp/Hour ratings take longer.
At the end of a conditioning cycle it will report the overall condition of the pack. Lights on the lower panel will display remaining capacities of:
less than 40%
40% to 60%
60% to 80%
80% to 100%
3. When to condition?
The manual indicates a conditioning charge will be useful in these cases:
You intend to check the pack's capacity.
A brand new battery which is "new and out of use"
A Pack that has not been used for six months.
There is also a line that might translate to "don't put the pack on the refresher more than once in a week."
Opinion:
Will the ADP03 revive Makita BL18xx lithium battery packs that stock chargers report as dead?
No. And neither can the full Battery Checker System. If it did, we would have reports that people went into service centers with dead packs and returned with revived packs. This does not happen. I have four packs that refuse to charge. The ADP03 did not help them
For NiMH batteries the answer is… Probably. NiMH batteries usually respond very well to charge cycling. The line about "new and out of use" batteries probably refers ONLY to NiMH packs. It is standard practice to deep-discharge-cycle all new NiMH batteries a couple times, and cycle them to full discharge relatively often. This is NOT true for lithium batteries.
Whether or not the ADP03's charge cycling has any real-world benefit to the performance of Makita BL18xx Lithium battery packs is a subject best left to the experts. So I went to CADEX.
https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prime_batteries
After reading that page and others, my conclusion is… "Not much benefit, but it certainly can't hurt… much."
If a lithium pack has been sitting six months there may be some theoretical benefit of charge cycling by removal of a "passivation layer". But this benefit is small and even the very existence of a passivation layer is in dispute. So it's theoretically possible that there may be a small benefit.
It may be that the only real benefit for lithium batteries is providing the user with hard data about the overall capacity of the pack. This can be used to balance the capacities of two packs for use in an X2 tool. This is necessary because when unbalanced packs are used in an X2 tool, the stronger pack may be damaged by over-discharge when it mistakenly charges the weaker pack. So-called "fuel gauge" meters show only state-of-charge, not capacity, which is a much more useful indicator of pack health.
Put it all together and the only reason to condition lithium packs is… "You intend to check the pack's capacity." … And even that is of marginal utility when you consider that Makita lithium packs tend to die suddenly, with little to no warning. All 18 of my good packs, including four that are over a decade old, reported capacity of 80 to 100%. I have a feeling that is the only capacity it's ever going to report. 80-to-100 or dead.
This makes it completely useless for Makita BL-18xx lithium battery packs. It's probably great for NiMH.
The Makita ADP03 Automatic Refreshing Adapter is one part of the larger 194918-6 Battery-Checker System (European catalog number) shown in the photo below (Photo shamelessly stolen from MakitaUK.com).
It is not a battery charger by itself, it must be used in conjunction with a stock charger you already have.
It has been a thing since the year 2010. The manual is here https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1237881/Makita-Adp03.html?page=5#manual
The complete Battery Checker System, the ADP03 is one part, shown on the lower left.
Top
Bottom Made in Japan. Not sure why, but I edited out the serial number.
Lower control panel, showing the condition button on right.
2. What does it do?
It has three modes. Notice the upper and lower display panels.
A. Normal Charge. The lights on the upper panel operate similarly to chargers you have seen before.
B. Automatic Refresh: If a battery is inserted and the ADP03 detects that a refresh is required for this battery, it will automatically initiate a refresh mode. A much quicker version of mode C is initiated. Lights on the lower panel become active. No capacity information is displayed.
C. Conditioned Refresh: Press the button and the conditioning cycles begin. A series of charge/discharge cycles are performed, with specific amperage/voltage/time algorithms designed to "restore useful service lifetime" to Makita lithium or NiMH packs (Additional adapter required for NiMH packs). The conditioning process may take between 4 and 10 hours. Battery packs with larger Amp/Hour ratings take longer.
At the end of a conditioning cycle it will report the overall condition of the pack. Lights on the lower panel will display remaining capacities of:
less than 40%
40% to 60%
60% to 80%
80% to 100%
3. When to condition?
The manual indicates a conditioning charge will be useful in these cases:
You intend to check the pack's capacity.
A brand new battery which is "new and out of use"
A Pack that has not been used for six months.
There is also a line that might translate to "don't put the pack on the refresher more than once in a week."
Opinion:
Will the ADP03 revive Makita BL18xx lithium battery packs that stock chargers report as dead?
No. And neither can the full Battery Checker System. If it did, we would have reports that people went into service centers with dead packs and returned with revived packs. This does not happen. I have four packs that refuse to charge. The ADP03 did not help them
For NiMH batteries the answer is… Probably. NiMH batteries usually respond very well to charge cycling. The line about "new and out of use" batteries probably refers ONLY to NiMH packs. It is standard practice to deep-discharge-cycle all new NiMH batteries a couple times, and cycle them to full discharge relatively often. This is NOT true for lithium batteries.
Whether or not the ADP03's charge cycling has any real-world benefit to the performance of Makita BL18xx Lithium battery packs is a subject best left to the experts. So I went to CADEX.
https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prime_batteries
After reading that page and others, my conclusion is… "Not much benefit, but it certainly can't hurt… much."
If a lithium pack has been sitting six months there may be some theoretical benefit of charge cycling by removal of a "passivation layer". But this benefit is small and even the very existence of a passivation layer is in dispute. So it's theoretically possible that there may be a small benefit.
It may be that the only real benefit for lithium batteries is providing the user with hard data about the overall capacity of the pack. This can be used to balance the capacities of two packs for use in an X2 tool. This is necessary because when unbalanced packs are used in an X2 tool, the stronger pack may be damaged by over-discharge when it mistakenly charges the weaker pack. So-called "fuel gauge" meters show only state-of-charge, not capacity, which is a much more useful indicator of pack health.
Put it all together and the only reason to condition lithium packs is… "You intend to check the pack's capacity." … And even that is of marginal utility when you consider that Makita lithium packs tend to die suddenly, with little to no warning. All 18 of my good packs, including four that are over a decade old, reported capacity of 80 to 100%. I have a feeling that is the only capacity it's ever going to report. 80-to-100 or dead.
This makes it completely useless for Makita BL-18xx lithium battery packs. It's probably great for NiMH.
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