As is always the case around here, we come across new junk, whether from old project waste or found junk or newly created junk in the form of dead devices. In our case, I'm referring to a couple old battery tools that have outlived what was probably their life expectancies. These tools are a couple Hyper Tough tools, one of which was from the first generation of tools I started gathering, which is the weed trimmer. The other one was actually a tool that was picked up somewhat recently, the hedge trimmer.
The problem with the weed trimmer is the support structure inside the trimmer head end has a wallowed out bearing cradle, which in turn caused the drive gear to eventually strip due to the excessive movement when the device was running. Eventually it got to the point where there were no teeth left on the drive gear where it made contact with the motor gear. As for the hedge trimmer, the motor is just shot. At times it will run around 60% power/torque then at times it will run around 30%. It isn't a battery issue, the motor is just worn out, brushes or an internal coil issue, either way, motor's shot. The plan here is to take the good motor out of the weed trimmer, along with the dual battery back end and swap out the bad 18v hedge trimmer motor with the good 36v weed trimmer motor. Afterward I would then somehow blend the dual battery back end with the back end of the hedge trimmer, creating a super hedge trimmer that has a 36v motor with dual battery power. First thing I had to do was disassemble the two devices. I started with the hedge trimmer, breaking the machine down to get to the cutter drive system where the bad motor is mounted to. I wanted to put my eye on this anyway in order to see how this thing goes together. It didn't take too much effort to pop the shell loose and get the driveline separated. From the way it looks the motor is easily removed after popping a cap off the bottom of the drive system and removing the two screws holding the motor in place. With this machine now broken down, I could move on to the weed trimmer. On the weed trimmer I had to pop off the battery end of the device as well as the motor/trimmer head end in order to recover the components for the build. I removed the battery end first, removing just enough screws to allow me to pull the end off the aluminum tube that makes up the center of the weed trimmer body. I would need some of the wire coming from the battery end in order to wire up the dual battery end to the hedge trimmer's motor. I then removed the screws to open up the head end to remove the drive gear and trimmer head while removing the motor along with a few inches of wire. With these vital components removed, I separated the garbage from the parts we'll be using in our project. Looking at the two motors, they almost appear to be identical, outside of the stampings of the motor model numbers and voltage ratings. The dimensions are the same, and I suspect the motors are interchangeable as well, which would be awesome as this would simplify that part of the project - installing the good 36v motor in place of the bad 18v motor. Another thing that I was looking at was the back end of the two machines. The weed trimmer end as well as the hedge trimmer body. I have some rough ideas of how to blend the two together. I've already come to the conclusion that the blending of the two bodies is going to be an ugly Frankenstein of a creation, so at this point I'll just focus on functionality, not cosmetics. The more I focus on cosmetics the more I'll probably end up with something that won't work at all, or something that may not be attainable at all. With all the parts for the build, I can move forward to swap motors then start cutting up the bodies to blend everything together. As stated before, the goal is to create a super hedge trimmer that will be even more able to chop through everything. Of course I could've just went and bought the 40v Kobalt hedge trimmer, the next version up from the regular 24v Kobalt trimmer we picked up to replace the Hyper Tough unit. But since I have these two dead tools, or more accurately, the components from these two tools, why not try to build one? Especially one that can use the batteries for the tools I already have? So let the building begin...
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