Can You Charge Milwaukee Forge Batteries With A Regular Charger?

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Milwaukee Tools has a few different battery systems under its banner to accommodate various power tools and equipment. These systems even have subsystems to provide a wider degree of intensity and longevity for different usages. For example, within the brand's M18 power system, you can find its distinct M18 Power Tools Forge batteries. The line is among Milwaukee's highest performance, highest capacity, and highest priced batteries, with one 18V 6Ah pack running you $229 at Home Depot.

One of Forge's biggest claims to fame is that you can charge up to 80% of its total power capacity in just 15 minutes. However, that is accompanied by a qualifier: You have to use the Milwaukee M18 Dual-Bay Super Charger. That said, as impressive as the Forge series is, it's still technically part of the M18 system, which has plenty of rank and file chargers for its regular packs. If you're trying to save money, it is technically possible to recharge a Forge battery with a regular M18 charger. The only catch is that you won't be getting those advertised charging speeds.

As Milwaukee's Forge batteries are part of the M18 system, they use the same connector framework as the standard M18 battery packs. This means that they can latch onto any product that has compatible connecting rails. It is possible and perfectly safe to place a Forge on a traditional M18 charger; it will get its charge back without overloading or underperforming.

While this will work, it's not an ideal approach. The Forge line isn't optimized for Milwaukee's regular chargers, which means attempting to fuel one with a standard mount will get you powering times roughly comparable to that of a conventional M18 XC5.0 battery pack — around 115 minutes for 100%. The only way to meet that advertised speed of 80% capacity in 15 minutes is to use a suitably speedy apparatus, such as the Dual-Bay Super option. Milwaukee's fast Super Chargers are the company's swiftest solutions, designed to work with a Forge's REDLITHIUM framework to deliver energy in the most efficient manner possible.

It's worth noting that the Dual-Bay Super Charger also works with standard M18 batteries, albeit not quite with the same charging speeds. Basically, your choice here is to either use an average vessel for all of your battery packs and endure the longer energizing times, or drop the cash on a Super Charger to get better performance.