Roughly 90% of batteries that are discarded are not properly recycled, and millions of power tool batteries end up in landfills every year. While this recycling issue primarily stems from a lack of easy and accessible recycling locations, the fact that so many are thrown away every year is concerning. Especially when these batteries are designed intentionally to hinder long term performance. It is safe to say that at least 50% of the batteries tossed each year had some small issue that could have been easily fixed, and for cheap.

With most major power tool battery brands, there exists a common issue: Balancing.

When cells in a series pack are imbalanced—such as one sitting at 3.9V and another at 3.2V—the battery management system (BMS) typically stops operation as soon as any single cell hits the low voltage limit of 2.5v-3v, or full charge value of 4.2v. During charging, the highest cell hits 4.2v first, cutting off the charger early and leaving the other cells (the pack) only partially full, which is why it won't show all indicator bars. During use, that lower cell drops to the minimum voltage cutoff long before the healthy cells, forcing the tool to shut down early due to "low battery" and resulting in short runtime. On a new pack, all cells are equal voltage, but as time goes on with usage and charging, this voltage drift naturally occurs, and is expected.

Strange part is, major brands do not balance their cells. Some of these batteries even feature cell balancing in their software to ensure cells can maintain the same voltage and resolve this issue. However, this is actually turned off in the software, thus leading to an inevitable cell imbalance and an early death date on your battery.

When you send me a pack exhibiting signs of cell imbalance, I will disassemble it and verify the issue. Upon noticing cell imbalance, I will then connect it up to my balancer and begin slowly bleeding cell voltages into each other until they all read the same. This is a cost effective way to solve the issue and give the pack many more years of life. However, this does take a considerable amount of time to perform on larger batteries. 

Once balancing is complete on any pack, it moves on to the load tester. For your safety, batteries may be held for up to 2 weeks in the load testing phase to ensure no parasitic drain exists and that cells are not drifting from one another on their own.

I only get paid if your battery leaves my bench working safely and taking a charge. If I open your battery and find it cannot be repaired or you do not like the quoted repair, you can choose whether I give the pack back to you for free or safely disassemble it for recycling. If a pack ends up showing signs that it is failing again within 90 days, I will service it once again for free.