Old Battery packs

Seeing Darrens post about batteries and Vaughns comment on giving up with nicads reminded me of a question i wanted to ask.

Has seen or know of whether any company has replaced ni cad batteries with lithiun ion packs when refurbing an old battery pack?
I have a panasonic cordless drill thats way to good to throw out yet i dont want to buy another nickle metal hydride pack for it. I was thinking perhaps the market place would have seen an opportunity in this and offer refurbs of packs. I recognise the charger would be different but presume outside of that if tha pack were matched voltage wise it would be ok.
Sad to have battery packs cost as much as a whole drill and charger replacement. Just waste to me.

So anyone know if this is being done and if so by who?

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I know Craftsman, Ryobi, Rigid offer up-grades to lithium packs for your older style tools {and probably many more company's} , but have no idea on private builders.

You might check with these people Rob, I don't know if they can do this or not, but would be a place to start.

http://www.voltmanbatteries.com/servlet/StoreFront

Thanks guys. Dan that place u linked to looks like they would know for sure. I will give them a call and report back later.

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Well i called this place and had a really good conversation. Turns out they cannot do the substitute of li ion for NIMh batteries. Apparently the li ion batt require circuits to be installed in battery pack to manage the cells for balancing (whatever thats supposed to mean) and from what the guy is saying the standard li ion packs they cannot even service them so he says guys that use their power tools very frequently get better life out of the old nicad technology tools because they can at least refurbish the battery packs. They do a refurb of a nicad for around eighty five dollars.

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so your saying that if you plan using cordless tools today to go back to the old nicad rather lition? if so you dont see any of them around in the box stores at least..

Well Larry this is what the guy was saying. But realistically we cannot go back as you said i just dont see them around.
I am going to wangle things to get my panasonic packs to them for rebuild and ship them to my Niagara address for free. I hate to waste a good drill. Best power tool i have ever had my panasonic 15.6v drill. Why they changed it i dont know.

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well i got two of them here and couldnt see spending the cost to rebuild them.. it was around 200 to check chargers and rebuild batteries threw mto company

I had two light duty, but very handly, cordless drill sets go useless when the batteries went bad. Not wanting to mess around with lower end stuff anymore I bought myself a nice Dewalt cordless drill with two batteries and a charger that will do either 12v or 18v batteries. Very excellent drill. But the batteries quickly died on me. Even with a full charge I'm lucky to get two or three screws set or holes drilled. I really don't know what the answer is. Talked to Tod about this. He won't use them. He uses air power which means hauling a compressor and miles of extension cord and hoses around. Not what I would call handy but professionally reliable once set up on a big job.

Frank i know what you mean. But i do think in some cases we our own worst enemies. I now have a Milwaukee M12 set and a Bosch 10v set and they both lithium ion.
The real cool thing is the Milwaukee has a battery gauge on it and thats handy because i dont put them in to charge unnecessarily for the just in case aspect. I did used to do that with my Panasonic. The other thing about my M12 milwaukee stuff is they are small batteries but last a long time. They very light so no issue to carry a spare around. They charge quick as well so i dont leave them on the charger longer than needed. I have found though its not good to leave them in the garage in winter. This year i brought them in and they have been fine.

I had just wished i could get the same sort of thing for my panasonic drill. I just hate the waste aspect here, its like the Printers you buy it then the cost of ink or toner is such that you can often buy a whole new printer of the latest model for the price of the cartridges. I cant stand that kind of waste.