757 Labs A Hackerspace in Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Makita DC1411 Charger / Battery Recharge Problem + Fix

Heads up -- if you have a Makita DC1411 charger for Makita power tools, they might be prone to cold solder joints. Had two NiCad batteries that appeared to be dead. The charger would appear to charge them (LED goes red for a few hours, then switches to green). The batteries would not work.

Bought a generic NiMiHi replacement battery. It came charged, and worked until it was dead. But it wouldn't charge. The charger looked like it was doing it's duties. After some head scratching I took apart the DC1411 charger and noticed the board had a number of areas that looked like the soldering was touched up at the factory. In addition to this, the legs of a transistor (that is on a heatsink) had a broken solder joint. Re-flowed it and the charger is as good as new. Turns out the original batteries still charge! The heatsink apparently gets hot so the bad solder joint is probably due to thermal changes.