Jack Erbes wrote:

Richard Lane wrote:

I use a 19.2 v Sears drill to raise the sail on my Nonsuch 26 and find
that the 75 watt 115 v charger does not function on the output of my
cheap square wave inverter. Would it work with a "modified square wave"?
Dick


I know a person that took a dead battery from a similar drill, opened
the battery case up and made themselves a simple adapter with a 10-12
cable that lets them clip onto a auto battery and run the drill off of
that. Those drills have DC motors and the voltage varies with the
speed, so it will work over a pretty wide voltage range. To get full
speed you would need to get up around the rated voltage (14.4, 19.2, etc.).

This adapter was made by cutting open the battery case, removing all the
dead/useless cells, soldering wires to the contacts, and "potting"
everything into place and reclosing the battery case with Liquid Nails
construction adhesive. It was more a tribute native cunning and
inventiveness than professional engineering but it works very well to
manipulate the leveling jacks on a RV.

Another option might be to check the output voltage from your 115V
charger and then look for a DC-DC adapter (for one of the older laptops
or something like that) with a similar output voltage and amperage rating.

I'm a little confused about how to do the latter method though. The
battery charger for my DeWalt 14.4V drill has an output voltage of 42V
as measured across the charging contacts. That is apparently DC, it
does not fluctuate any on my meter. The charged batteries are in the
13-14 Volt range. I think the 42V charger voltage is because the rated
voltage of all the cells (in series) totals a little less than 42V or
something like that. Maybe one of the electrical gurus here can explain
that.

Jack

Yes those are certainly other alternatives however going via the NiCad
battery and then recharging reduces the peak current demand of directly
running the drill from the house battery via a 12/19.2v dc-dc inverter.
In fact I am thinking of replacing the NiCad cells with NiMH cells when
the two packs lose their charge taking ability and so achieving
increased AH.
Dick