Not to be confused with a couple of other “sku’s” ….
I managed to loose the charger for mine. It wouldn’t matter, except I was trying to be cheap when I bought this and I still want to be cheap. Since I’m using this to grind tungsten for tig welding …. I don’t expect the front end bearings to last forever. So I have a few options now:
- Order a replacement charger through Ferrex … except they don’t exist.
- Order a replacement battery and charger …. except they don’t exist.
- Replace the rotary tool with a comparable one from Hyper Tough, who manages to make surprisingly decent tools, except that would cost $35.
- Do a bunch of research and see if I can’t play some games.
The purpose of this post is to document the internals of this battery pack and maybe help another fellow out who also chunked the charger. This is the tucchus end of the tool. That is not the part number of the battery but the part number of whole dang thing. Thanks Aldi. The Art.-Nr. 836994 is the Aldi sku? Even though Aldi has a manual section on their website, this thing doesn’t come up. Thanks to the EU, everything’s gone to USB-C charging but this (as shown per the date code) was made before that EU Ruling. Also, screw you EU for picking an awful connector. But I digress.
As it turns out there’s 3 #2 philips head screws holding the top to the bottom. Remove those, pull the base and the can apart and you get this tidy package. It’s a set of 18650 li-ion cells in series. This give a nominal-ish 12 VDC. Technically it’s nominal voltage is 10.8 VDC. On top is a tidy BMS, charge port, and the clips that connect the battery to the tool. The red and green wire on the side are balance leads, so that also helps to confirm that there’s an onboard BMS.
The charger is a 6.3mm x 3.0mm barrel plug. Center positive. I used a 12.6v 2A wall wart to charge the battery. I didn’t actually have a wall wart that fit, so I picked up this adapter pack off of Scamazon. The output voltage of the battery maxed out at 12.08 volts. Even with the charger plugged in, the battery pack only output 12.08 volts so I don’t know that using a higher voltage output would actually get you anywhere.
Know more? Leave it in the comments.