Wiring a battery charger

by **Stillia** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:46 pm

I've just recently bought a cordless Makita drill with lithium batteries from Ebay. The seller was American & in his advert, said that the charger was 110 Volt, but did not come with a 110 plug. I thought nothing of this until it arrived the other day.
The plug attached to the charger was 2 pronged, so I though that I would just buy myself a 110V commando plug, cut the other one off & wire it to the end.
However, there are 2 flexes coming from the charger, which are sort of joined together and when I cut off the 2 prong plug & snipped back the insulation there is no live or neutral colour coding on the conductors, they are just bare copper, therefore I have no way of knowing if it's wired correctly to the 110V commando plug & is safe.

Can anyone help me with this, as I'm hoping to charge my drill on site through a transformer, rather than having to fork out for a 240V charger???

Thanks, Andy.

by **sparx** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 8:13 pm

Hi, polarity unimportant as long as you can seperate the conductors complete with insulation on each which may be black & white U.S. colours.
Site type transformers are centre tapped to earth so are 55-0-55volts to give 110 out on two main contacts just don't connect to centre earth pin.
regards SPARX.