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Post by highlander on Aug 15, 2014 22:14:16 GMT -5
Picked up a second hand bargain in the form of a mint condition mafell ksp55 24v cordless saw for £250. I was a bit dubious of the nicd batteries but took a risk and it paid off, the saw is awesome! Usual mafell build quality, makes my makita lxt look and feel like a toy and it actually has far more power and run time than I was expecting. Ripped over 10m of 2" pine no problem with plenty power left over so it will be more than powerfull enough for what I will use it for, the makita with its 18v li-ion battery wouldnt have managed the cut and would have likely killed the battery in trying. The saw also works on the current guide rails so all in I am delighted with it, has anyone else had any experience with mafell's older 24v saws?
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Post by wrightwoodwork on Aug 16, 2014 1:02:06 GMT -5
Excellent at that price it's well worth a shot
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Post by ohan on Aug 16, 2014 1:33:16 GMT -5
I take it Mafell doesn't have a Festool-like "Returns and Seconds" sale, then?
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Post by highlander on Aug 16, 2014 3:20:23 GMT -5
I have found a company that do 3ah nimh batteries for £60 that fit the saw and will work but dont know if the charger will charge them safely. The other alternative is genuine mafell nicd batteries at £220 a pop........yowza! Excellent saw though and super accurate on and off the rail, well chuffed! As for factory seconds, I dont know, maybe wrightwoodwork will know, awaiting my kss400 now, could have used it this week putting up an extension, would have saved alot of time and effort marking and cutting all the rafters and sarking, we used my colleagues ts55r marking each rafter with a bevel then using a mould and then laying the rail on the lines, worked ok but the 400 would have been much quicker and way more efficient. Cut all the sarking and valley rafters (145×22 and 145×45) by hand as the chopsaw couldnt manage which when wet (I live on the west coast of Scotland) is not easy. Really looking forward to using the 400, only got to use it on smaller finishing jobs before and found it ok but not ideal, the 300 shines in these instances but for timber framing the 400 is the boss, kss80 would be even better stil but a bit out of my budget for now and maybe not quite as good an allrounder due to size and weight.
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Post by wrightwoodwork on Aug 16, 2014 6:13:50 GMT -5
Not sure where the best place for used mafell, properly the German ebay or some other german site.
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Post by highlander on Aug 17, 2014 4:33:29 GMT -5
Ordered a spare battery from allbatteries.com, its a direct replacement for the original 24v 2.4ah nicd battery except it is a 24v 3.0ah nimh battery so should run for longer and can be charged anytime unlike nicd which should be run down before recharging. The mafell charger can charge nicd and nimh batteries so no problems there, just need to wait and see, if the new battery is any good I will order a couple more as a cordless circular saw is sometimes invaluble to me(sometimes do maintenance jobs and refitting wheelhouses out on fishfarm barges)Its a quality bit of kit as unlike every other cordless circular saw I have seen it is identical to the corded version so is a proper circular saw with all the features and build quality of the corded version.
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Post by fred64 on Feb 13, 2015 5:21:32 GMT -5
I own a KSS400 24V (from the pictures I cannot tell the difference from a KSP 55 24V), purchased as a used unit with two batteries ("one is dead, the other one is nearly new").
It turned out that one was absolutely dead (the charger was flashing red), the other one was barely usable (I could use the saw for 15 seconds maximum....).
I opened both batteries shells, dismantled the cells (20 cells each; 1.2 Volts) and started to charge them individually (with a "clever" AA and AAA charger that let you charge cells one by one, with a slow charge, a reconditioning charge, etc...).
It was long and painful (some cells did not hold the charge at all, some were nearly fine), but in the end, I could make one strong battery from the 40 cells I had, saving the whopping 250€ from Mafell.
If you look on Ebay you can find one guy in Germany who can rebuild packs (you will have to unscrew your battery shells, solder the two leads and here you go), you can have cheap NiCd (Chinese) for 2Ah capacity around 60€, cheap NiMh for 2.4 Ah capacity around 80€ (Chinese) and 100€ if you ask for Japanese NiMh cells of 3Ah (Sanyo or Panasonic, worth the investment if you ask me).
I have to check my records but I should be able to source some dismantling photos of my batteries.
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Post by fred64 on Feb 13, 2015 5:37:21 GMT -5
Please find below a link to a picture of the charging process, you can see the various leads that run from the charger to each cell (very useful bunch of 10 leads for 2-3 € in electronic stores); Mafell 24V battery chargeI did not manage to insert the picture although I copy/pasted the direct link inthe "insert image" popup, might my local setup I do not know...; The cells are wrapped in stiff brown paper, you have to cut it to reach the + and - of the cells. Some cells were 0.2 Volts and were still 0.2 after a long slow charge, some were back to 1.20+ Volts and lost the charge quickly, some were back to 1.20+ volts and remained like this for several days so I kept them. When a battery pack goes wrong it only means that "some" cells are dead, but not all of them. It is a bit tricky to solder the cells but you can "cheat" (using a bare copper wire already tinned helps greatly, no need to heat the whole cell too much)
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