Are DeWalt Batteries Compatible With Harbor Freight's Hercules Tools?
A cordless drill is a must-buy power tool for first-time homeowners, but disaster strikes even the best tools. In the middle of a project, your Harbor Freight Hercules cordless drill weakens and stalls. The battery's dead. Not to worry, just slide in another battery pack, right? Except you realize you forgot to charge a replacement, so you begin to despair — at least until your eyes land on the characteristic yellow of a DeWalt battery you have lying around. The two companies' battery packs don't look that different, so you're tempted to exchange one for the other.
Hypothetical scenarios aside, Harbor Freight offers tools at an affordable price, with their products often marketed as dupes for name brands. In comparison, the Harbor Freight Hercules 20V Max drill compares favorably to the DeWalt 20V Max Impact Driver drill, with the Hercules retailing at $69.99 while the DeWalt retails at $179. These prices do not include the batteries themselves, and the $219 price tag on a 2-pack of DeWalt 20V Max Lithium-Ion 5.0Ah batteries might give you pause, especially when considering the added expense of the tools. While the Harbor Freight Hercules drill is kinder to your wallet, the power and quality of a DeWalt battery is difficult to beat, with the company considered to be among the top performers in the tool industry, so combining them might seem like the best of both worlds. There's just one problem — they don't fit together.
They're just not feeling a connection
Even if the voltage and appearance are similar, a DeWalt battery will not slide into the connection terminals along the bottom of a Hercules drill. While that might be a hassle for you, it works well for the companies' needs, since they don't want you to wander away to another brand for other parts. Upon first inspection, the battery packs do look remarkably similar, though, so what's not clicking for them?
According to VCG Construction (via YouTube), even though the batteries' top plates might have the same number of slots and seemingly identical locking clips, the DeWalt battery will not slide into the Hercules drill even if forced, as both companies manufacture their batteries with a stopping mechanism on one side that only corresponds to a drill from the same company. In addition, a DeWalt battery has a small obstacle on the opposite side of the stopping mechanism that will keep the Hercules drill from attaching. While you could modify the DeWalt battery to remove these obstacles, it still won't work, as the battery and the Hercules drill have incompatible terminals, keeping the battery's power from reaching the tool.
You can adapt, but should you?
If you really want your DeWalt battery to work with an incompatible Harbor Freight tool, you can invest in an adapter, like the X-Adapter, which Toolman Tim's Workshop used in his YouTube video testing the efficacy of combining a DeWalt battery with Harbor Freight's Bauer tools. While the adapter does work, it defeats the purpose of an important aspect of DeWalt's batteries: A circuit board that controls power delivery to the tool.
In a proper DeWalt to DeWalt connection, the circuit board would communicate to the tool to ensure the tool's motor receives the right amount of power to keep it working at peak performance while not overloading the circuit and damaging the tool. By bypassing that circuit board, you halt that communication, making it possible to fry your Harbor Freight tool. The next question is: what about the reverse? Are Harbor Freight batteries compatible with DeWalt's tools?