The issue is amps. Your wife's wall wart charger can probably do something like 200ma max current at 18 volts or so. That's .2 amps. A 1amp 120 to 12 volt converter is a pretty good sized brick.
The lift motor pulls 40 amps. My chainsaw pulls less than 60 amps, probably around 30-40 too. That's the key.
The more current you pull, the heavier the circuit needed, the more heat generated from the transfer. Even a little wall wart gets warm; multiply that by 200 (40amps is 200 times 200ma) and you need beefier equipment.
There's also the issue of quantity of scale: A lot of people want a little device to power a cell phone. Few people want one to power a lift. Thus the cost goes up to make one since the market is little.
As for myself, I love the chainsaw, but I also know that once my little lights start getting out of sync, it's time to put the rear batteries on a seperate charge. When last I checked (after cuting a lot of wood) I found that one of the rear four was low on water (oops) and the other three were at a lower charge than the front two. Topping them all off with water, and doing overnight charges on each of the 6 volt batteries seperately seems to have brought everything back into balance.
Chris Fixinguys aol com wrote:
Question from a non-electronics guy:My wife has a wall cube gizmo which takes 110v and distributes it to either 18v, 12v, 9v, or 6v, depending on the port you plug into the laptop, radio, etc. Why does it seem so elusive to develop a unit which takes 36v and distributes it to 18v (lift), 12v (lift), 24v (chainsaw), or 36v (original implements), thereby eliminating equalization problems and extending battery life?SteveA e15