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C

crabapple

i bought a lxt600 set for 700 and 18 months later all three batteries have packed in
any suggestions??
the lithums have 10 rechargeable batteries with the first supplying a chip that monitors activity and if it gets too low then the chip shuts the whoe battery down. Usually its the first cell which hapens to be the only one supplying this chip.

they need regular charging even if not flat, but now ive got three duds plus ive got a makita combi bhp 18v where the battery has gone so thats 4 batteries.

850 is a lot of money ( 700 for the lxt 600 and 150 for the limitd edtion white 18v combi)

in screwfix the batteries are like 139.99
on ebay about 60
replicas on ebay are like 50 quid

any suggestions

as i have 2 18v combi drills out of action
a impact drill
a torch
a grinder
a circ saw
and even the recipricating saw

ive lost the receipt but it was about 18 months ago i got the lxt600 from screwfix
the white 18 v combi i got about 3 yrs ago from castle hardware

at the moment im relying on my bosch nicad 14.4 drill/driver

but i feel absolutely gutted and ripped off

any advice would be appreciated
thanks in advance
 
If you are feeling gutted and ripped off then I would suggest that the Sale of Goods Act comes into play here.
Goods supplied must be fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality and I would suggest that a life time of 18 months is not what one would expect from a rechargeable battery.
Three years may be an expected life time for a rechargeable battery, however in both cases it does depend on the use to which the batteries were put.
IF they have been very heavily used day in day out and constantly recharged then they may have exceeded their useful life, normally batteries state that they are rechargeable say 1000 times, if you were charging the batteries every day for three years you would exceed this figure.

Normally LI-ion batteries are good at holding charge and work well for a long time, since yours have not, then search your records for details of the purchases, see if you can at least find demonstration of purchase (emails, bank statements, credit card statements or preferably receipts) and then approach the seller to see what redress you can claim. There is consumer information about faulty goods on the consumer website.
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have you tried another charger? it seems weird that all 4 have packed up. where are the batteries from? do they have a CE mark on the bottom or are they from the american market?
 
I used to sell alot of the Makita LXT range when had my break from the tools and I've never come across this problem before just the standard one with the selector going, (mine has done already this year and it was a right pain as I use these day in day out)

Normally with a Li-ion battery you dont really need to be recharging all the time as they will hold their charge for ages, think of it like your mobile phone. If you have battery left and you turn it off when you turn it back on you should still have the same amount of battery left.

This type of battery thrives on being 'topped up' so I put mine on when i have a quick break from working. Unlike Ni-Cd you don't have to run these batteries flat before you recharge them as there's no memory effect on them.

Things that I would try before giving up hope;
Using another LXT charger just to check that its not your charger thats gone down and causing problems with the batteries themselves.

Contact Makita their customer service from my previous experience has been without fault and quick.

You might well still be able to get hold of a copy of your invoice from Screwfix but it might be a long phone call speak to the Electrifix team on the phone and just see if its still there.

Failing that replace the batteries replicas are ok but nothing beats genuine batteries
unfortunately since the LXT is top of the Makita range the batteries are pricey. Try having a look on
http://www.its.co.uk
last time I checked they were HIGHLY competitive on genuine batteries
 
something is very wrong here, I suspect it may be the charger at fault too. Can you confirm if they were all charged using the same same unit?

When i bought my makita LXT drills a couple of years ago I did ask some main dealers about the reliability. they were pretty honest and said some of the batteries had developed faults but the majority of cases there are no real issues. It depends on how old the product is, could have been one of the first ones produced which did have those reliability issues.

Btw, I'm no superfan, unfortunately all tool manufacturers have these problems. Some more than others, just is such a pain in the arse when they go wrong.
 
Large numbers of Makita Li-Ion battery failures are still being reported despite redesigns of battery packs and their chargers. Anecdotal evidence suggests the Makita battery packs do not last more than 50 - 60 charge cycles (if you are lucky!), less in particular circumstances.
The battery packs are made up of two components a bank of Li-Ion cells and an electronic micro-controller on a Printed Circuit Board (PCB).
The purpose of the electronics on the PCB in most Li-Ion batteries is to protect against overcharging, overheating and deep discharging all of which damage Li-Ion cells and can cause them to become hazardous.
Makita however have designed their battery packs with all these features and some extra safety ones too, there is a micro-controller which monitors how many charge cycles the battery has had, and constantly collects data from it. The smart circuit will also detect a faulty battery and after 3 failed charging attempts it will disable the battery permanently. Now this is a safety first feature because of the real danger of Li-ion batteries catching fire and/or exploding, remember the Sony laptop computer battery fires of a few years ago.
The micro-controller inside the pack needs to be powered, and it draws its power from the very cells it is monitoring. The basic design flaw is that the circuit is wired to be powered by only one of the many cells in the pack. The PCB draws a constant although small current from that single cell. If the battery is not used for a few weeks then that cell will deep discharge causing a weak link in the bank of cells, the pack then fails in the charger. Now if you unwittingly attempt to charge the battery 3 times in this state, the battery pack will be permanently disabled. When this has happened the only way to restore the battery pack is by complete re-manufacture or replacement.
So if you use your battery power tools every day you might have been lucky enough to avoid this problem by recharging their battery packs everyday.
 
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