Sounds like you’ve already checked this, but I would guess a contacts issue based on your description of the behavior. I’ve noticed the chargers do read “fully charged” sometimes when they have a poor/partial connection to the battery. Might be worth double-checking that the charger pins are making good connections with the battery’s contacts…
I think you’re probably right, I had a second go at the contacts this time I got in there with the needle nose and bent them slightly to tighten the contact, (I noticed they were maybe 0.5mm apart at rest) then ran a tiny flat file in and out a few times in each contact which brought one battery back without issue, the other stubbornly wouldn’t charge, until yesterday when I received a brand new DCB-1104, which charged it up without an issue, so maybe there’s an extra little bit of contact resistance on the old chargers, maybe the new charger has different error detection circuitry… Who can say.
Nice! That’s great to hear.
Thanks for the detailed teardown of this and other variants! I’m just gonna add some pictures of a DCB183 which had a slightly different internal PCB in case it is useful for others. It also shows the marking of the IC after getting the conformal coating off.
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I expect it’s a new user limit of images-per-post that goes away after a bit. How did you remove the coating? I’ve never played with doing that.