By Andrew Liszewski
You might think it’s impossible to recharge the batteries on a cordless screwdriver in just 90 seconds and you’d be right. But the FlashCell from Coleman manages to pull this off since it doesn’t actually use batteries, but instead relies on a large capacitor.
So while the FlashCell charges incredibly fast it also discharges just as quickly. An equivalent-sized battery powered screwdriver might be able to handle 37 screws but you can expect the FlashCell to give up after about 22. (As taken from Popular Mechanic’s review of the FlashCell.) However the advantage is that once you stick it back in the charger you only have to wait a minute and a half before you can get back to work again. Team Products International, the company who actually makes the screwdriver claims it has a life cycle of about 500,000 full charges with no memory effects and will retain about 85% of its charge after sitting unused for 3 months. They admit that the technology wouldn’t work as well when applied to something like cordless drills but for the occasional assembly project around the house this seems like a pretty great idea.
The Coleman FlashCell is available on its website for $99.99 and you can read Popular Mechanic’s review of the screwdriver here.
[ Coleman FlashCell ] VIA [ Popular Mechanics ]
This would rule with a supercapacitor instead of a normal one. Then you’d get a lot more work done and waist less time charging.
The capacitor in this device probably qualifies as a supercapacitor to perform as well as it does with a motor load, at least compared to standard capacitors. The point they're making, though, is valid – that it's impressive to get 2/3rds the work out of a device that recharges in 90 seconds that you would expect from a lithium-cell device that might take many minutes to recharge; not to mention twenty or thirty times the number of charge/recharge cycles (at least).
This is the future of handtools. Great.. I expect other tools of this electric design, like drill, kitchen mixer, foamer,
The waiting period of 1.5 min is not hampering anything in practice. If in need buy 2 of these