757 Labs A Hackerspace in Hampton Roads, Virginia.

4Jul/116

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.

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  1. sounds like a winner!!! Makes sense cause the last time I used the unit I had to wait till all cooled before i could recharge the batts…

  2. (so I likely burned a connection or two, I’ll investigate with the mag glass asap..

  3. I had the same problem with mine. Another site said he replaced the transistor on the heatsink, about $6 and it worked fine too.

  4. Wish I searched the charger number before discarding all those expensive batteries I thought would no longer charge.

  5. I had the same problem as you did. I was ready to return my new Ni-mh battery to Amazon as defective because it would not charge. Then I found this posting. I checked the solder joints and they looked so-so, so I re-flowed the solder joints and tried to charge my new battery. It was a no-go, still no charge. So I read that somebody replaced the transistor on the heat sink. So I check out mine, sure enough on of them was bad. I changed it out for 8 bucks and boom, I can now charge my new battery. I did notice that while I was charging the battery, the battery charger gets quite hot, a little to hot for my liking. So I took it back apart and drilled a few .125 holes in the sides and on the bottom. Put it back together and finished charging my battery and noticed the charger does stay cooler now. Not real sure it this is a good idea or not. Have to make sure the charger stays out of dusty conditions. Would not want to get to much crap inside the charger. We will see how things go. Thanks for all the posts, they really help.


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