Need some Milwaukee 18V batteries?

Milwaukee just gave us an insane deal. They have a triple bay charger with 2 18V batteries for under $100 right now. That's a great deal for 2 batteries, and with the multi-bay charger thrown in you've got yourself a bargain.

On a side note, Matt says it looks like they made the charger much smaller than they used to. The truth is, it's actually just not to scale with the batteries in the picture. That's what happens when we use PhotoShop to create product images of multiple items.

** Added ** This is the older charger that doesn't handle Li-Ion batteries. Rather than being stuck with them, Milwaukee is trying to boost battery sales by giving away the older chargers. Still, it's a great deal if you're using 18V Milwaukee cordless tools.

Convert your Ni-Cad Milwaukee Tools to Lithium-Ion

Milwaukee Tools just started offering a cool upgrade for existing customers with Ni-Cad tools. It's a kit (2 batteries and a charger) that allows you to power the older Ni-Cad tools with their newer Li-Ion batteries. For around 2 bills, that's not bad at all if you've got several tools already that you'd like to give the longer run-times.

What's even better is that they're offering a 5 year warranty on these batteries. with the first two years being exchange replacement.

Why would you want to do this? There are a couple of reasons. The biggest being that the weight of Li-Ion batteries is considerably less than Ni-Cad, which means your tool using experience will be much more pleasant. Li-Ion also have a longer runtime and more charges in their lifetime.

While this isn't a "Throw out your old working batteries" type of an upgrade, if you've got some aged cells and are looking to freshen your personal battery inventory, this appears to be a great way to go. If the other manufacturers offered this, I'd be all over those, too. It's hard for me to pass up new geek toys.

For more information, including current pricing, you can take a look here.

Makita 18V Lithium-Ion Drills - White vs. Blue

Today, we added the Makita BDF452HW 18V Lithium-Ion Drill to our website. The first thing you'll notice is that it's white. We nicknamed it "Shamu" when we first saw it. But what makes it different from the standard blue Makita BDF451 18V LXT Lithium-Ion drill?

Pricepoint

So the first thing that'll grab you is the price difference. Sure, $100 less is a big deal, but there's got to be a cause, right? I mean, $100 for blue dye in the plastic they use seems a bit high. But wait, looking at the specifications reveals the answer.

Batteries

The Watt Hours of the batteries differ considerably. On the BDF451, they use 3 AH batteries at 18V, which gives 54 Watt hours (AH * V). The BDF452HW has 1.5 AH batteries at 18V, which gives 27 Watt hours. So the runtime on the BDF451 is going to be twice that of the BDF452HW with the included batteries. What's being done here is that Makita, in trying to get to that $200ish pricepoint, has made smaller batteries for a "Value" line.

Charger

The charger included with the white model is a 15 minute charger which doesn't have a fan includes a fan, although it wasn't listed anywhere in the specs for the charger. The blue model includes the 45 minute optimum controller with temperature control via a fan to circulate air through the battery itself. This helps create a more even charge by having the cells in a more consistent state during charging.

Update: Makita will apparently be moving all of their tools to this charger, which will be 22 minutes on a 3AH battery and 15 on the 1.5AH.

Transmission

Also noted is that the BDF451HW uses a 2 speed transmission and the BDF452 uses a 3 speed. The difference in gearing makes for a 450 vs 560 rating for torque as well. Not that most people will notice the difference in torque, but that shows which markets each one is intended for.

Markets

The white model is intended for use in the high-end homeowner market, the DIY guys and low-end contractor market. The blue model is the flagship, with all the bells and whistles, designed for the professional that is using the cordless tools on a regular basis. They're both Makita quality, but they're just expanding their horizons a bit. The side handle, belt hook, and a few other minor differences make the BDF452 the choice for contractors, and most DIY and homeowner types won't even notice those are missing.

Good Call

I think Makita made a good call here going after the lower price market. This should make it a much easier choice between current 18V Ni-Cad and Li-Ion drills and moving up to Li-Ion. Kudos to Makita for being first to come out with a full featured Li-Ion cordless drill at Ni-Cad pricing.

Is that a V28 Engine under the hood? Milwaukee Li-Ion Chevy Bel-Air

The "Red Line" tour came to our place today. This included the Monster Garage built V28 powered car. Not only is this thing cool to look at, it's also pretty darn quick - getting up to almost 100 mph in the quarter mile. It runs from 384 of Milwaukee's V28 Li-Ion batteries and drew quite a bit of attention (yes, that's almost $50k and 900 lbs of "fuel" for those keeping score at home, not including the 210 V28 chargers). I'm sure that seems like a decent chunk of cash to most of us, but our rep stated that getting this car built cost them $275k, so it's not all that much in comparison.

Now that you know what powers this beast, allow me show you some of the details of this interesting rechargeable automobile.

Stock looking interior

As you can see, the inside is fairly "standard". Nothing overly impressive, other than it looks great for being a 1962 vehicle. Milwaukee had it done in their black and red color scheme with some white highlights, but it still looks pretty stock. It wasn't perfect, but it was also done pretty quickly for the show and wasn't what they were really concerned with. They did, after all, just want to make something that went fast down the 1/4 mile track, and 93 mph in 14.5 seconds isn't too bad for a power tool battery powered car.

Interesting accellerator

If you look really close (clicking on the image to zoom in a bit helps), the gas pedal is actually like those used on boats for trolling motors. I found that a bit amusing that they ended up using one of those, but it is understandable since they're running electric motors with it and not moving a lever to open up the carb letting more fuel and air in. I hadn't ever really thought about what they would use for an accellerator, which is probably why it stood out as much as it did to me. Either way, the feel was a bit different and I thought it was worth noting. The wire coming off of it will be re-run at some point, but for now it's functional.


Stock from the front

From the front, this car looks fairly stock as well. Nothing really screams "electric muscle car" from the outside. Come to think of it, electric muscle car is sort of an odd term. The other phrase I heard to describe this is "High-tech classic". That didn't really make much sense either. An electric car shouldn't be considered a classic if you ask me, regardless how old the body style is. But I would have to agree that it's sweet technology, as would most any classic car enthusiast. I'd still prefer a V8 over a V28, but that wouldn't help with Milwaukee's marketing like this does.

Sweet wheels

The wheels that they chose looked pretty nice as well. I like the Milwaukee logo sweeping across the fender, even if some of the paint had already decided to bubble and start peeling. But hey - it's a classic car body that's been on the road being shown at tool stores around the country, so you can't expect it to be perfect. It's still plenty shiny, and those low-profile tires look nice. I'm just glad I didn't have to mount them on the rims. That would have been a real pain in the back-end. I guess that's why I decided to be a geek and not a tire changer for a career.

Under the hood

Now that you've seen the outside, it's time to take a peek under the hood. Being an electric, it looks quite different. No gas lines, just electrical wires. No oil dipsticks, no air filters, just solenoids and fuses. But since it's a newer technology, it's pretty neat to look at. I think it's cool that a car can run that fast and be almost completely quiet, void of the typical rumble of exhaust pipes. Obviously, if it were a commercial vehicle it would have the wires hidden a bit more, but it's not so it was just made to be functional and semi-pretty to look at. I'll include a few more pictures below from under the hood, just because it's neat.




In this last "motor" picture, notice how fire was hand drawn coming from one of the monsters. Sort of a neat touch.


The Fuel

As you can see from the underside, there is no gas tank. Why would anyone need a gas tank on an electric car? Some of the straps for transportation are still draped over the rear end and sway bar (was that supposed to go there - the bar now looks bent), and you can see that the power cables aren't actually hooked up. At the top of the picture, you can see that the trunk was wood lined, which allowed for easy mounting of the battery receptacles. No, there weren't 384 batteries installed, but looking up it was easy to see where they all went.

Battery mounting system

To the left is the view from under the trunk. For whatever reason, they couldn't get the trunk to open, but from the underside all of the battery positions were visible. I was a little shocked to see rust on the underside of the trunk, but it is a '62 Bel-Air body with 43 year newer battery technology - and it shows in areas. The car is still sweet, but it isn't immaculate like I was expecting. In their defense, they did put it together in 4 days and have it scheduled to go in for a complete refinishing (body / interior) after this week. We're one of the last stops to get to see the Monster Garage's original work.

It was an interesting distration from our usual power tool workplace. Given a few more of these events, my blog won't even have to talk about power tools - just the publicity stunts that the manufacturers are trying. But until we get to that point, I'll be going back to Power Tool blogging for a while... except for an upcoming Milwaukee Chopper post.

Cordless tool battery stability

Cordless tools batteries are simple, right? Well, Matt didn't think so when he was researching this article on cordless tool batteries. There is a lot of information there, but one thing he didn't really address was stability. His article was already pretty long, so that got left out in the interest of getting it published in the first place.

Basics of battery ratings

Cordless tool batteries are measured in Volts and Amp Hours. Volts is the amount of juice at any given moment, while Amp Hours gives reference to how long the battery can last when doing a job. That's about a simple as I can make it. Ok, one more try using a water pipe as a metaphor. Volts is the speed of the flow of the water, Amps is the diameter of the pipe that can be filled, and Amp Hours is the length of time that this flow can be maintained.

What is battery stability?

Since batteries end up having chemistry tied to them, and nobody that isn't wearing a funny white coat really wants to read about chemical reactions, I'll try to keep this more of a high level overview instead of really in-depth.

What it essentially boils down to is that stability is a measure of how many charges the battery can take before a cell goes bad. Based on the chemical makeup of the battery, this can vary quite a bit. This is also where the newer technologies really shine.

Ni-Cad (Nickel-Cadmium)

This is really one of the oldest battery technologies. The chemical makeup is Nickel and Cadmium, which ends up having the worst symptoms from voltage depression. I won't go into the details about voltage depression - you can read it at the provided link if you are interested. What I will say is that the chemical makeup of Ni-Cad means you see the least amount of time between failures in most cases.

Ni-MH (Nickel Metal Hydride)

This is a slightly newer technology, but it still has voltage depression issues. Although the symptoms aren't typically as quick to develop as Ni-Cad, they do exist and still have to be dealt with. But here's the big secret - The higher the Amp Hour rating of the battery, the less stable the chemistry of the battery. Let me repeat that in different language - Longer life per charge (higher Ah rating) means fewer charge cycles before a cell goes bad.

Li-Ion (Lithium Ion)

For power tools, this is the newest technology. This is similar to what cell phones have been using for years, but with much larger cells to give a cordless tool some actual run-time. For example, my cell phone has a 3.7V 1000 mAh battery. The smaller ones on cordless tools right now are 18V with 3000 mAh (3 Ah). That's quite a difference. But what about stability?

When talking about stability in a lithium battery, we're talking about the different chemical makeups. This is different than the concerns with Ni-Cad or Ni-MH batteries. Basically, when the manufacturers were originally attempting to make Li-Ion for power tools, there were many explosions because of chemical instability before anyone got it right.

That's not a big problem any more, but we still see people searching for V28 explosions at times. I don't know if they want video or are just doing research to make sure that they're safe, but either way it sounds like someone heard about some old problems.

Chem Is Try

The fun thing I remember about chemistry from my days at UNL is that Chem Is Try. Nothing ever comes out perfect the first time, and conditions can contribute to unseen problems. This is not only true in skydiving (as the bumper sticker to the right points out), but also in chemistry.

Milwaukee spent over 7 years on R&D for their V28 series of tools. Makita didn't want to spend that long, so they decided to use Sony Li-Ion cells which were being used in other high-demand applications (digital cameras, camcorders, etc.) already. But the point is, the battery chemistry used by these manufacturers has been tested for quite some time now to make sure that the batteries don't go boom. A few of those could cripple their reputation, and in this industry reputation is a powerful ally or an even stronger adversary.

Dual Drill - Two Heads Make One Bad Idea

Brad, one of our Customer Service Reps (if you've called us, you may have talked to him), asked me if I had seen the infomercial with the gimmicky drill yet with the flip around head. I hadn't at the time, but now I can say that I have. They called it the "Dual Drill", and I've got to say - it's revolutionary. Well, if you consider a very bad idea revolutionary.

Drilling Power
Let's start out with some basics of drills. They spin, and to have power in doing so will need a solid connection between the motor and the chuck. Anything that can flip and use a different chuck with minimal effort doesn't have a solid connection between the two. That means you'll have limited power at best. It may not show up when drilling small holes like they show on the infomercial (appeared to be 1/8" or less), but if you're trying to use a wood spade or a holesaw, you're going to want a different drill.

Drilling Speed
According to their site, this drill is "0-550rpm". What's my Makita 18V cordless drill run? 0-450 on the low setting, and 0-1400 on the high speed setting. Making holes on the slow speed is pretty annoying. The high speed is much better for drilling. The newer models are 0-1700 rpm. I also noticed they don't have a clutch for the screwdriving chuck of the dual drill. That's not even a true drill/driver. It's just what they called it, a dual drill. So why do they show it driving screws? They probably figured nobody would notice.

Chuck Quality
A quality chuck alone runs around $30 each. If you have 2 of those, there's no way they can make a decent drill with the cost that's left. Adding in a charger and a battery doesn't leave much, then a case and the included bits? There is no way that the chucks are of a reasonable quality, let alone the rest of the tool.

Crafty Camera Angles
They show a "Contractor" drop one of these out of the 4th story window. It falls, the battery comes off, but it still works once they put it back on. Well, as it's falling we see it turn on its side. Let's just say that it was carefully dropped at a specific angle to do the least damage. They also don't show it actually hit the ground, so who knows if they cut away and have a different drill or not. They also drop it onto material that will reduce impact. They're not dropping it onto anything as hard as concrete or even packed dirt. It was dropped onto a loosely packed rubble pile. At the angle it was dropped, I'd venture a guess that any drill could handle that fall into a pile of soft materials.

Google Shows Deceit
Not that most "Only on TV" products don't have that problem, but I wanted to point out that this one is no exception. Some are even as bad as this customer comment on HSN's site about the infomercial itself:

Customer Reviews

What a deal! (Dana, GA)		01/27/2006
My husband is a tool junky. He saw the info on this and had to have it. We ordered off the infomercial and 3 weeks later had heard nothing and they hadn't taken the money from the charge card. He was very upset. I decided to look on HSN. Found it and ordered it. He had the drill in hand within a week. 2 weeks later we got the charge from the infomercial order. Needless to say . . . HSN is great!

There were some others that came up on the first page of results for this product as well. Sites like www.infomercialscams.com had several complaints already listed, which isn't good for a newer product.

Other Clues
There are some other clues that this company doesn't intend to be around long. If you go to the official site, which is listed as dualdrill.com but redirects to tvgoods.com/carts/dualdrill/index.php?t=tv&m=tv&c=na&k=www.dualdrill.com, you'll quickly see that clicking on the "Customer Care" link shows their other "quality" products, and a different phone number for each. However, the Dual Drill has 2 phone numbers depending on when you placed your order. Nice. The page for the Dual Drill also doesn't look like the rest of their website, which is a sign that it isn't a reputable company.

The Dual-Drill® is the perfect gift, but the manufacturer has only allotted us a limited amount. This is an amazing offer you need to jump on right away!

Nothing says I'll be around tomorrow like the terms "Limited amount" and "jump on right away"... especially on the "Official" website.

As part of this introductory offer we're adding something nobody else does. Order the Dual-Drill® now and we'll give you free replacement batteries for life * - just pay the shipping!

Let's face it - every battery quits working eventually. Offering free replacement batteries for life, with the "Life" having the * next to it, sort of implies that there is a weird condition here. If it were free with the *, that'd be a different story. They do have a note saying "* When your Dual-Drill® battery wears out, simply send it back to us and we'll send you a new battery, and all you pay is shipping and handling." They don't say how much that shipping and handling is, nor do they say what "life" implies. If that's the life of the battery, then it's worthless. If that's the life of the company, it may be worth even less than that.

One Final Clue
For those of you not familiar with "Search Engine Optimization" (I'd assume most of you here aren't), the use of hidden text is something you'd do for a short term gain if you don't care about keeping the ranking for a long time. They included hidden text of "Home of the Dual-Drill, also known as dualdrill, duel drill, dueldrill, and dual drill." on the homepage of the product (scroll to the bottom of the page and press CTRL+A to see it). Hidden text is a spamming technique and is generally considered a very bad idea if you're running a legitimate company that intends to be around for a while. Most search engines will find that and penalize the site, although not usually for a short while - which is where the short term gain comes in as well as the long term loss.

Bad Idea and a Shady Looking Company
Not only do I find this to be a bad idea if you really want a drill and not just a glorified screwdriver, this also seems like a very shady company for the reasons I've listed above. If you don't want to get taken to the cleaners, I'd avoid these people and buy a quality drill from a leading manufacturer of cordless drills. Adding a quick-change set will allow you to switch the bits out easy enough that you wouldn't see much of a benefit from this drill from an ease perspective, but you'll also have a lot more power and a much faster drill from a company that has been around this industry for quite some time. If this "Dual Heads" were really a good idea, one of the current manufacturers would have purchased that patent.

Do Your Own Research
Don't take my word for it. These were just my observations on this product. Do some searches on Google. Watch the crafty angles of the commercial. Do some research, check out the reviews, and remember that good tools will be available from an industrial supplier.

V28 Jobsite Microwaves?

Yes, I said V28 Microwaves. Our Milwaukee rep is so pumped about the future widening of the Milwaukee cordless line that he's predicting things as wild as jobsite microwaves, outdoor power equipment, table saws, miter saws, bench grinders - you name it, they're looking at making it cordless. I suppose that any company that is crazy enough to make a cordless tool battery powered car that runs 100MPH in the 1/4 mile is bound to come up with some oddball products with their cordless line, and it should be exciting seeing the races as the other manufacturers try to keep up in making everything cordless.

I'm looking for comments on the craziest cordless tool concept.

A cordless jackhammer comes to mind.

Cordless concrete saw? Could be possible.

Cordless drywall lighting system? Sure, why not?

How about a V28 powered electrical generator? (Actually, that was something our rep threw out, so it may not be so crazy.)

V28 powered charger for an 18V battery? Ok, that's just silly.

How about a V28 powered forklift?

What can you imagine?

Questions to ask to choose the correct voltage of cordless tool

9.6V, 10.8V, 12V, 14.4V, 15.6V, 18V, 19.2V, 24V, 28V, 32V, 36V - So many options. How do you go about selecting the correct voltage when buying a cordless drill (or other cordless tool for that matter)? Well, there are a few simple questions to ask yourself to get to the correct answer and not break the bank (or your wrist) at the same time.


How much power do you really need?
Higher voltages give more power. But how much power is really necessary? If you're only drilling some pilot holes or driving screws into drywall, then power makes no difference. If you want to drill into concrete, you'll need more power. Our EVP still swears by his Makita 9.6V cordless drill for pretty much any job he does, and he's remodeled quite a bit of his house now. More voltage isn't always needed.

Do you already have other cordless tools?
If you already have some cordless tools, getting something that matches up will be useful. By doing that, you'll end up with more batteries for each of those tools. That can be a big plus and certainly something to consider. You may also think about what other people you know have, in case you borrow a tool or loan one to them.

How often will you be using this tool?
If you're using the tool infrequently, the weight may not matter much. Larger voltages are achieved by using more cells, so the batteries get much heavier as the voltage goes up. The exception is that Nickel Metal Hydride batteries are slightly lighter than Nickel Cadmium, and Lithium Ion is lighter yet. There is also the Amp Hour rating to look at. More Amp Hours means the battery will be heavier as well.

How long will you be using this tool at one time?
If you need a long runtime, the Lithium Ion tools are going to be more attractive. Also, by having more power, higher voltage tools don't need as much of the potential energy for each task, making them last a little longer. Amp Hours will again play an important role here. Higher is good for runtime, but for Ni-Cad and Ni-MH batteries that reduces the number of charges in the battery's lifetime.

What types of jobs will you be doing with this tool?
Are you going to be doing jobs over your head? If so, light weight is going to be important. Material will be important as well. Drilling through pine and drywall doesn't take much. Oak and concrete takes a whole lot more. Carefully considering all of the jobs you'll be doing will help decide what exactly you'll be needing.

What other cordless tools would you like to have?
If you want a cordless impact or some other specialty tools at some point down the line, take a look at what voltages those are available in. Some will only be available in 12 or 14.4 versions. Others will require Li-Ion to get the full line of tools available, such as a cordless porta-band. With so many cool tools to choose from, plan carefully for future purchases before you commit to a battery voltage and technology.

How much do you want to spend on this tool?
Lower voltages are still incredibly useful, yet the cost will be significantly lower. If you want to save on cost, 12 or 14.4 may be your best option. 9.6 may even be the best option in some cases. Just remember that buying too little could mean problems down the road with too little power. Buying too much may be too heavy and make the tool less usable in that way. Pay attention to the tool weight, battery weight and torque, then balance them so you can get what's important to you in a tool. Keep in mind that bigger isn't always better, so buying for the biggest numbers is pretty silly.

Tool batteries don't get a "Memory"

In our recent Makita training, we learned something interesting. Tool batteries aren't subject to the "Memory" effect like other cordless items are.

Memory Cause
So, what is it that causes the memory effect? Well, Makita explained that it is the repetitive use of a battery at the same drain level. Basically, if you consider a cordless phone it has 3 levels. Standby is one level, on a call is a second level, and the 3rd level is ringing. Since a phone spends most of its life in standby, or (if you continually charge it) always on a call, the end result is that the battery gets the same load level repeatedly. A camcorder is a more extreme example, since playing and recording are almost exactly the same level of draw.

Why doesn't this affect tools?
Since tools work on different types of material, run into knots in wood, use different size bits and are variable speed, there is a wide variety of draw levels for the batteries to get accustomed to. The result is that the memory effect is minimized or even eliminated. Chances are that a tool battery will have a cell go bad and quit taking a charge long before it can develop a memory.

Why newer technologies?
In cell phones, the newer battery technologies (Ni-MH and Li-Ion in place of Ni-Cad) were primarily to deter a memory. Each technology was less prone to memory than the technology before it. So why do tools need the upgraded batteries? Runtime, power, consistency and the environment. The Li-Ion tools have a longer runtime, in many cases twice that of previous technologies. They also offer more power that is much more consistent through a charge, making the first use similar in power to the last use of a charge. Ni-Cad is also extremely harmful to the environment, although the others aren't really "good" for it. They are just considerably less harmful than Ni-Cad.

Lower voltage batteries - a Makita secret

One of the most unusual little known facts about Makita cordless tools is that any of their pod style batteries can power a tool made to run on a higher voltage, just with a shorter runtime. This has some very interesting applications, especially buying new tools.

Keep using your old batteries
If you buy a newer Makita tool, you don't need to worry about your old batteries becoming obsolete. For example, if you had a 12V drill before and decide to buy a 14.4V impact, the 12V batteries will still work in the new tool. If you had a 14.4V drill that broke, you could buy an 18V no problem without losing the use of your old batteries.

Save money when buying additional batteries
If you want to save a few bucks on your next set of batteries, you can always buy a lower voltage. That's a unique ability. If I decide that 18V batteries cost too much, I can buy 12V or 14.4V replacements. I don't know of any other brand that is set up this way. Very useful for buying batteries for a flashlight, probably not so cool for buying batteries for my miter saw.

Borrow a battery
My neighbor has 12V Makita tools. If I'm in the middle of a job and run out of juice, I can borrow one of his for any of my 18V tools. That could be handy at times. Of course, having 4 batteries of my own means there are few instances where I'll have to borrow a battery, but it's still nice to have the option.

Reminds me of blood types
This reminds me of blood types. Having a 12V is a universal donor (Type O). Owning an 18V tool is a universal recipient (Type AB). Of course, with Lithium Ion coming out now this isn't going to be a universal technology much longer. Also, the MakStar tools don't fit in the same interchangeable line, either. It's still something cool that you can amaze your friends with. Tell them to try that with their "other brand" tools.

Cheap Cordless Tool Shortcomings

I've seen lots of cordless power tools lately that are under $50. We even sell some. But what that makes many people wonder is what are the shortcomings? Are the more expensive tools really that much better?

Gears
Gears are one of the places many cheap tools are lacking. Many are plastic or nylon, making them lightweight and cheap but lacking durability. That's what I call disposable.

Batteries
Batteries can be made inexpensively by using lower ratings. The smaller cells typically have the ratings measured in mAh (milli-amp hours) instead of Ah (amp hours). The difference is a factor of 1000, so 800 mAh (like many inexpensive tools) is much less than a 1.7 Ah tool. The result is a battery that doesn't last as long on a charge.

Chargers
The main place that cheap cordless tools lack is in the charger. A decent charger, such as a Makita DC1804, will run around $50 by itself. Why is that? The most expensive part of a charger is the protection circuit. This protects the charger in the event of a bad cell in the battery. Cheap cordless tools don't have a protection circuit.

Who cares?
The answer is that anyone buying a tool that they expect to last longer than a battery should. Once a battery cell goes bad and it gets placed on that charger, the charging circuit gets literally fried. If you, as most people do, spend weeks to find a source to buy a replacement charger in this situation, it will get fried just as soon as you put your dead battery on the charger. At this point, you've got 2 fried chargers and a bad battery. You'll need to buy another charger and another battery now to get it working. This tends to lead to practicing 4 letter words as you throw things in the trash.

Why should you pay more?
Simply because it will cost less in the long run. The batteries will do more work per charge, the tool won't break as easily, and replacement parts are much easier to find. The "I'm not going to use it much" argument doesn't hold up, either. The less a battery is used, the more likely it'll get drained and sit around, which is one of the main causes of bad cells. Do yourself a favor and spend a little extra.