One of the baseline headaches of using battery-powered power tools is ensuring you have a steady supply of rechargeable packs to accommodate all the tools you own. This can be a bit of a problem if you're using one of the major hardware brands like DeWalt, as while its products are generally good, they're also not cheap. Getting a couple of 20V DeWalt battery packs from Home Depot will run you over $200, and that's before you start buying the actual tools.
What if you wanted to use a high-quality
DeWalt battery but wanted something a little cheaper than name-brand tools? You might try to purchase a different brand of tool, such as one from Hercules power tools, from Harbor Freight. Indeed, a Hercules tool like a drill driver would be substantially cheaper than its DeWalt counterpart. Unfortunately, there's no loophole to be found here; a DeWalt battery pack cannot be used in tools from any other brand, Hercules included, even if the voltages are the same. This is due to the physical differences that prevent them from facilitating a connection. In theory, this could be overcome with a third-party battery adapter, but these adapters present a potential risk to your tools' health.
Read more: 6 Non-DeWalt Tools That Work With DeWalt Batteries
A DeWalt Battery Cannot Attach To A Hercules Tool
If you took a casual glance at a handful of different power tool batteries from every major power tool brand, you might think they all look the same and, therefore, should be able to fit into any other tool to power up. However, for both legal and practical reasons, power tool brands can't use the same connections as each other. Doing so could invite all kinds of legal trouble, and besides that, keeping connections exclusive helps to keep you in a particular brand's ecosystem.
In the specific case of DeWalt and Hercules, if you take a close look at battery packs from both brands, you can see the differences, specifically in the shape of the connection terminals on the tops. A DeWalt battery has six equally-sized notches on top, with angled rails on the sides. A Hercules battery has only five notches, with a wider one in the middle, and rails with a slightly different curve. Even though the overall differences are minute, it doesn't matter; tools from these respective systems are only designed to receive batteries that fit their receivers perfectly. If it's not a perfect fit, they can't deliver power. Even if you could somehow lock a DeWalt battery onto a Hercules tool, the different number of terminals would still prevent electricity from flowing.
There Are Battery Adapters, But Using Them May Be Hazardous
If you feel frustrated by the lack of inter-brand connectivity, you are not the only one. There are numerous brand-specific adapter plugs made by various third parties and sold on websites like Amazon and Power Tools Adapters. These adapters are designed to lock onto a battery pack's connector rails, then plug into a tool's receiver in the same way as one of its native batteries.
On paper, this seems like a perfect solution for both saving you money and diversifying your tool collection. Sadly, like many "perfect solutions," it's not perfect at all. Connecting a DeWalt battery to a Hercules tool via a battery adapter will get electricity flowing in the technical sense. However, the important thing to know is that, when a battery connects to a power tool, it doesn't just pump energy unrestricted.
DeWalt batteries, and most power tool batteries for that matter, are equipped with onboard circuit boards that carefully regulate and optimize the delivery of power to the tool. When you use a battery adapter, that circuit board can't communicate with the tool. You're just getting unrestricted energy flow, which can either cause the tool to underperform due to mismatched power needs or, more concerningly, cause the tool to overload and burn out its motor. It's a mistake that could end up ruining your power tool battery entirely. If either a tool or battery is damaged due to the use of third-party adapters, any warranties you had will be voided, as you technically used them in a way their respective brands didn't sanction.
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Read the original article on SlashGear.
