Power Your Drill With a Computer Power Supply!

Slowly and sadly my drill battery died.

Drill batteries cost more than $2

I thought of the fact that I never need It to be portable because my dad has a killer Dewalt drill that's almost too powerful and scary to use...

This gave me a pretty obvious idea: Why not power it with power from a regular wall socket (obviously not directly from 220 volts to those who didn't understand)

Is This Plan Even Possible?

Drills like to eat a lot of amps, so I figured I'll need a power supply that can give a lot of amps. I decided to go on 5 AMPS because my drill spins at a maximum of 550 RPM which Isn't as high as most drills on the market these days.
If you do this on your own drill there is a chance your drill won't even budge on 5 AMPS, but luckily mine did.

Step 1: This Is the Drill

If you look at the picture close enough, maybe you'll notice I cut off the bottom. I did this so it would be easier to reach and solder the wired to the connectors of the drill.

Step 2: How Did I Find a Power Supply?

I Didn't. Well, I half Did

My drill works on 9.6 VOLTS

For that, I took a laptop computer power supply/charger which was 20 VOLTS 4.5 AMPS. Reminder I need 9.6 V

It took a pretty long time but finally I found the right thing.

Step 3: The Power Supply

I Copy-Pasted the specs, Corrected the grammar the best I could, And edited the length.

Input voltage: DC 4.0 ~ 38V. Output voltage: DC 1.25V ~ 36V continuously adjustable (the input voltage must be higher than the output voltage by 2V). This means if I give It 20 V It can easily give 9.6V on the output.

Output current: max 5A, recommended for 4.5A. The output Wattage is up to 75W, If you use more than 50W, it is recommended to enhance heat dissipation. It comes with a tiny heat-sink, which is good enough for me.

The Efficiency is up to 96%, Which is good enough for me.

Size: 5.4cm x 2.3cm x 1.5cm.

If you want to buy the (step down only) converter you can get it on eBayherefor less than $2.

Step 4: Soldering

After splicing of the computer connector, I soldered the input wires as seen in the pictures

If you're interested in seeing my solder stand that helped me hold the pcb instructable, (in picture 2) you can see it here

Step 5: Don't Forget to Adjust It to the Correct Voltage!

To do this, You need a multi-meter (use the voltage setting) and a small screw driver.

Keep turning the potentiometer until your voltage meter screen shows the voltage you want, in my case i wanted it to be 9.6 V.

Step 6: More Soldering

Now my power supply had 9.6 volts so I soldered the output wires to the PCB which the other end of them would later connect to the drill.

Step 7: Hot Glue Time

I wasn't able to put shrink tubing as insulation, so instead, I insulated both connections with a hot glue gun.

Step 8: PCB Enclosure

I didn't want to risk the PCB touching a conductive surface and short circuit, so I decided to use a box from a coin cell battery charger that I saved in my bag of reusable project enclosures, If you now what I mean...

Step 9: Almost Done

I put the power converter inside of the box, And closed it with zip-ties so I it would be easy cut them and open it if I needed in the future.

Step 10: The Last Time Using a Soldering Iron

As you see in the picture, It was easier to solder and insulate the connections to the drill as I shortened the handle earlier

Step 11: Last Step of the Project!!!

I poured a whole stick of hot glue (trust me, it is way more than It sounds) into the bottom of the drill where the solder connections were made just to make it more durable.

Watch out if you do this because it took the enormous amount of hot glue more than an hour to harden!

Step 12: Teeny Tiny Extras

The video above (maybe it's at the bottom of your screen) is a video of the drill working, I don't know why but it has to download to your computer to be able to view it, I scanned it twice to make sure it doesn't have a virus .

I hope you enjoyed, If you make this make sure to post a picture in the comments section so everyone and I can see.

If you caught a mistake I made accidentally, please point it out so I can fix it.

If you want to see more of these kinds of projects, make sure to visit my instructables page and maybe subscribe.

Thanks for watching, It means a lot to me!

If you have any questions, make sure to post them in the comments and I'll make sure to reply as quickly as possible :)