[harrysin]

I suspect there were other reasons. There was a GMC warranty agent here in Rockingham and I was in their shop one day and saw through an open door a mountain of faulty items that had been scrapped. The business was in a large factory unit with a really high roof and the pile which looked like an enormous Christmas tree almost reached the roof. In other words GMC were exchanging faulty products willy nilly. My own experience was one of their cordless drills, the batteries were not holding a charge so I phoned GMC and explained the situation and guess what, about a week later a brand new drill complete with it's two batteries arrived in it's original box. How can any company survive when A:it's products are not reliable and B: when they simply swap a product at the drop of a hat.
When I opened up the battery at least half the cells were totally dead and the rest close to it.

 

[harrysin]

This is a photo of my BEST and ONLY charger that I now need.
for Ryobi, Ozito, Carbac repacked batteries up to 18V.
The 3rd terminal of the batteries must have a 10K thermistor connected to a battery negative case.

This AUD5 charger now charge my Ryobi (14.4V), Ozito (18V), Carbac (18V) batteries as they all have almost identical dimensions - sorry Max 18V.

With most people going Li-Ions, this excellent charger for Ni-CAD/NiMH can be very cheap to buy.

Silicon Chip also designed a DIY charger using the same temperature sensing principles.

Before I found this charger, I just used a mains timer with my lab. constant current power supply to charge those NIMH batteries

Before I bought the GMC drill I phoned GMC and asked if the charger is automatic, ie: goes into trickle charge when fully charged and was told definitely YES, but I doubt that it was. One day if I think about it I may do some tests on the chargers, I still have both. These days, for my two B & D drill batteries I use a count-down timer to be on the safe side.