I recently enjoyed a long phone call with Milwaukee Tool’s charging tech product manager, with the goal of learning much more about the brand’s next-gen technologies.
At Pipeline 2024 – I’ll link to the recap at the end of this post – Milwaukee Tool announced several new charging products, including a new dual-mode Packout-compatible 6-port M18 battery charger, mountable dual port SuperCharger with Cool-Cycle, and a Power Manager.
We talked about all of these new charging products. I learned more about how they worked, and also about the design intent.
For me, the biggest takeaway about the 6-port charger is that it was transported tested to ensure it can withstand being jostled around while being mounted in a truck, van, or trailer.
Apparently it takes additional engineering – inside the charger and in regard to the battery connection – to ensure consistent and reliable operation when taking things like highway speeds and potholes into consideration.
The M18 6-port charger is daisy-chainable, and was designed such that you can have up to 4 units charging up to 24 batteries on a single 15A circuit. With each charger capable of recharging 2 batteries simultaneously, that allows for up to 8 batteries to be charged at the same time.
When switching from Rapid charging daytime mode to night mode, you can have up to 10 chargers on a single circuit recharging up to 60 batteries. This is because the charging rate is throttled down in the user-selectable night mode.
Similar was said about the mountable dual port Cool-Cycle SuperCharger, and it was suggested that additional engineering work was done to ensure this version is optimized for mounted use inside a moving vehicle.
I learned a lot more about the Power Manager, which will be available in 2 versions – 15A and 20A, to match users’ intended usage environments and applications.
While the Power Manager might look like a power strip, there’s a lot going on beneath the surface.
As with the mounted charging components, the Power Manager was designed for use in mixed environments, including vehicles such as a landscaping trailer.
The goal of the Power Manager is to maximize the user’s electric infrastructure via circuit maximization, with many of its features seemingly intended to eliminate user frustrations and hassles.
Let’s say you connect an array of chargers that would otherwise trip a 15A circuit breaker. The Power Manager offers dynamic charging; it will activate the maximum number of any combination of chargers and will turn off any outlet if a power spike is detected.
The Power Manager lets users combine charging systems and create custom setups without having to do any complex power utilization calculations, all while avoiding tripping electrical circuit breakers.
On a circuit with other loads, the utilization percentage can be dialed down by the user, with the selection being saved to the Power Manager’s built-in memory.
It’s a pricey piece of kit, but one that will stretch how many chargers you can use on a single circuit.
There’s a lot of intelligence within the Power Manager, and many of the electrical components, such as the relays that control each outlet, have been selected and tested to deliver high cycle life at high amperage loads.
I have come to really like the idea of the Power Manager, especially since it doesn’t care what’s connected. It assumes that chargers are connected, and maximizes the number of outlets that are powered at any time (while avoiding tripping any breakers). But, it doesn’t care what’s charging, let alone the brand.
It’s not suited for all users, but might prove to be an indispensable problem-solver for others, and potentially one that avoids the need for costly electrical infrastructure upgrades.
All of the new charging tech is expected to launch in Q1 2025.
Also Read:
Every New Tool Milwaukee Announced at Pipeline 2024
New Milwaukee M18 Packout-Compatible Charger is a Huge Improvement
