DeWalt 18v Lithium Ion batteries not disintegrating??

When these first came out, I researched them fairly heavy (as a contractor, not as a flashlight guy) and the one thing I kept reading over and over was that somewhere around the 5 year point, they were going to self implode, disintegrate, or any other term that basically warns you it's going to be dead as a door nail!

I was and still am perfectly happy with NiCads. In fact even now of the 30 plus 18V batteries I have it's split down the middle. There are definitely times that you want the extra weight to balance out a certain tool. Drills are a great example and also the pivot head flashlight stays put much better.

Not to mention that as a plumber, when I'm deep in a crawlspace or a 30 minute adventure to a certain corner of an attic, I pretty much like to have advance notice when my battery is running out and don't like to be shocked by pulling the trigger and finding out I have nothing!!!

Before I take off to those type jobs I like to test the tool to see if the pack is fully charged or not. With Nicad I can judge by listening to the motor and tell if it's got a lot of juice, ions who the heck knows!!

However I am a prepper and VERY heavy into batteries (it's the one area of life that people don't think hard enough about) And what I loved about the lithium ion was two things and two things only. It's stability in cold weather, but MAINLY, the fact that once charged always charged. Who wants to get caught with their pants down and have something happen and the electricity goes off just to find the nicads were sitting up for a couple months and already half dead.

Plus if you come across a source to charge them when SHTF, you need them to hold its charge for as long as possible!!! No doubt hands-down, as a prepper, you want the ION.

However, the one big negative was at some point it would all come to a screeching halt and that would be the time to trash them. And hope your NiCad's haven't turned their back on you for not being your first love

Hasn't happened to me!!! My FIRST purchase was 4 packs stamped 2010 and yet? Going as strong as the day I bought them. What gives guy????? I know I'm special, I just never knew my batteries were too!

If the cells used in the packs were good quality (which is likely with a good tool brand), and they were stored properly (ideally half-full), they should still work well after 9 years. So, I don't think your batteries are special. They should still have about 80% of their original capacity, maybe more. If they still have 100% of their original capacity, then yeah, they're special.

never had any nicd disintegrate, they do die rather quickly if misused, never top off nicd cell, always discharge fully before recharging, do not store nicd fully charged for long time it degrades capacity, otherwise they are sold reliable batteries,
i still have several 18v dewalt tools, a vacuum, jigsaw, drill, sawzall, for all except the vacuum i use adapters and 20v li ion cells, for some reason adapter will not go into the vacuum.
not only li ion hold charge longer, can be topped off, and have charge gauge, they are also almost 4 times lighter, 18v nicd weights almost a kilo, and has 2,4ah, my dewalt 20v li ion weights 600g, and had 5ah. in your case it might worth to switch to li ion, while keeping your 18v tools, the only negative side of adapters (originals from dewalt) is they drain cells if they are left in them, i always remove the pack before i put away the tools. also drills can no longer stay upright as they did with 18v pack,
there are many third party adapters, sold for half the price, but some can not handle current in some tools. people in reviews said it happened when drill got stock, or during heavy drilling load, so steer clear of none dewalt adapters.

I had 2 9.6v drills and a 12v nicad drill and replaced them with 20v lithium ion drills and never looked back. I would have to recharge the 12v drill about 6-8 months and even fully charged in use it would start up great then slowly get weaker and weaker then be unusably weak while the 20v kept solid till it was nearly depleted. My 9.6v was worse the batteries needed charging every month or two and one of them went bad on me. 20/18v lithium ion packs have 5 cells in the, 10 if they are double layered (parallel) while nicads take 15 cells to get the same voltage which means 3 times as likely to develop a bad cell.

Nicd cordless tools actually turned me off of cordless tools. It wasn't until lion came out that I started liking them. My 8 year old Dewalt pack is still going strong. The cells in it are made in Japan, so that's likely the answer, quality cells. About your complaint about them being questionable, newer Dewalt packs (cells made in Korea) have a built in battery gauge. Wanna know the charge level? Push a button.


On a side note, I bought at a yard sale a black and decker drill and 2 battery packs for it that were made in Japan. I then saw a hard surface blower for sale at Wal-Mart and bought it, since it came with a battery pack and the two packs for the drill fit it. The battery it came with was 7 months old according to the manufacture date. Cells made in China. Fast forward 2 years to now and it's 2 years and 7 months old and the Japanese battery packs according to the date, are now 4 years and 3 months old. Take a guess which one still powers the blower the longest, despite them both having the same capacity cells?

I have a dewalt battery stamped 2011 on my desk right now and it's still going strong. I really wish it had the status bars the newer ones do, because like you say, it will suddenly die when you least expect it. But I wouldn't trade li-ion for any other tech. The energy density is mind blowing compared to the old 18v ones. The darn 18v would noticeably decline in performance over the years. Leaving you with the tough choice of calling it 'good enough' or buying a new one. I'm 8 years into the li-ion ones and it is still a beast.

alpg88 said:

never had any nicd disintegrate, they do die rather quickly if misused, never top off nicd cell, always discharge fully before recharging, do not store nicd fully charged for long time it degrades capacity, otherwise they are sold reliable batteries,
i still have several 18v dewalt tools, a vacuum, jigsaw, drill, sawzall, for all except the vacuum i use adapters and 20v li ion cells, for some reason adapter will not go into the vacuum.
not only li ion hold charge longer, can be topped off, and have charge gauge, they are also almost 4 times lighter, 18v nicd weights almost a kilo, and has 2,4ah, my dewalt 20v li ion weights 600g, and had 5ah. in your case it might worth to switch to li ion, while keeping your 18v tools, the only negative side of adapters (originals from dewalt) is they drain cells if they are left in them, i always remove the pack before i put away the tools. also drills can no longer stay upright as they did with 18v pack,
there are many third party adapters, sold for half the price, but some can not handle current in some tools. people in reviews said it happened when drill got stock, or during heavy drilling load, so steer clear of none dewalt adapters.

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I am not sure you are understanding the question in my post I'm not talking about NICAD, I am referring to the lithium ion batteries, as the title indicates! But it was interesting reading what you said anyway LOL.

So then does anyone have any idea why they say they will disintegrate themselves at five years? Was this maybe just when they first came out and they were guessing in advance? If no one else is having this problem then the information provided to consumers was wrong??? I'm glad they are

cheaperrooter said:

So then does anyone have any idea why they say they will disintegrate themselves at five years? Was this maybe just when they first came out and they were guessing in advance? If no one else is having this problem then the information provided to consumers was wrong??? I'm glad they are

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It's probably just an estimate, based on normal usage and storage patterns. And, maybe an attempt to drive some sales of replacement batteries. If you use your batteries hard a lot, they'd last less than 5 years. Store them at 100% charge, and they might only last 5 years. Etc. Treat them well, and they'll last over 10 years.

My oldest 18650 Li-ion batteries are about 14 years old today. They were in an old Dell laptop pack. There was a chip inside. The computer started holding less and less of a charge. Finally it wouldn't even power on without the wall cord. BUT it was the chip. It was decreasing the capacity based on some Dell idea of what should be forced on you. I removed the cells from the pack to discover they were all at 3.7 ish volts. I popped them in a charger and they performed perfect. I ran a load test and was amazed they seemed to have great capacity. There was never anything wrong with them.
The pack only seemed bad because of the nanny chip that decided it was time for me to pony up for a new Dell battery. It was the last Dell PC I ever bought.

joshk said:

My oldest 18650 Li-ion batteries are about 14 years old today. They were in an old Dell laptop pack. There was a chip inside. The computer started holding less and less of a charge. Finally it wouldn't even power on without the wall cord. BUT it was the chip. It was decreasing the capacity based on some Dell idea of what should be forced on you. I removed the cells from the pack to discover they were all at 3.7 ish volts. I popped them in a charger and they performed perfect. I ran a load test and was amazed they seemed to have great capacity. There was never anything wrong with them.
The pack only seemed back because of the nanny chip that decided it was time for me to pony up for a new Dell battery. It was the last Dell PC I ever bought.

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Yup, I had the same thing with an HP laptop battery pack. The computer reported the battery needed replacement, and would only power it for a few minutes on a full charge. I took the cells out, and their capacities were all over 80% of original. Their internal resistance was only slightly greater than new cells, too. I think those battery packs build-in a limited number of cycles or lifetime, regardless of how the cells are performing.

cheaperrooter said:

I am not sure you are understanding the question in my post I'm not talking about NICAD, I am referring to the lithium ion batteries, as the title indicates! But it was interesting reading what you said anyway LOL.

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oops, sorry, my bad, lol and it is right in the title, that is embarrassing, but....i have seen, used, dewalt li ion 18v, cells, they predate 20v system, they are pretty bad ones, they die faster than misused nicd, at my work we had them years ago, they seem to have no balance circuit, and cells go out of balance, unlike modern 20v packs that have that as well as charger that monitors cells. we threw those batteries away not long after purchasing, and went back to nicd, until 20 v system came on the market.
i totally forgot about those, i did not think anyone would use those today. they aren't made for many years, even if you find new ones in a pack, it will be old stock, god knows how many years on the shelf, and may self discharge too deep and be useless. go with adapter and 20v cells

some are sold as brand new third party packs, my experience with 3rd party packs, (not 18v li ion dewalt, but 18v nicd, 20 v li ion), waste of money, i wasted several hundred on them, got them from different manufacturer\seller, different models, for different tools, every single one was inferior to OEM, even when they claimed more capacity, it was in fact less than oem, i measured them multiple times on hobby charger, they under perform greatly,
i do like power tools as much as flashlights so i have plenty of both, much more than i actually need,

My Black and Decker batteries are red Sanyo INR cells. They hold up very well in my experience, and DeWalt is the more expensive version of Black and Decker, so you have nothing to worry about. These cells are also used in Motorola battery packs that I work with every day, and there has never been an explosion. When they do fail, they almost always fail open circuit. Less often, it's low capacity - and very rarely, high self discharge.

even the best cells will go out of balance and pack will stop working, if there is no balance circuit, and those li ion 18v from dewalt do not have one, they are charged same way as nicd, 2 wires. dewalt had 2 types of chargers, yellow, for li ion and nicd, and black for nicd only.
in any case today those cells worth 0, if you still want to use your 18v tools, get an adapter made by dewalt, and use 20v cells.
just got new 3ah 20v dewalt packs, seems they use 21700 now instead of 18650

alpg88 said:

even the best cells will go out of balance and pack will stop working, if there is no balance circuit, and those li ion 18v from dewalt do not have one, they are charged same way as nicd, 2 wires. dewalt had 2 types of chargers, yellow, for li ion and nicd, and black for nicd only.
in any case today those cells worth 0, if you still want to use your 18v tools, get an adapter made by dewalt, and use 20v cells.
just got new 3ah 20v dewalt packs, seems they use 21700 now instead of 18650

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I don't understand your comment about today they are worth zero? I still have 25 of them or so they still all work flawlessly? And they are still available everywhere??

cheaperrooter said:

I don't understand your comment about today they are worth zero? I still have 25 of them or so they still all work flawlessly? And they are still available everywhere??

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you have 25 of these?