Can I leave Milwaukee XC batteries on the charger overnight?

So I've seen this question and a Huge variety of different answers over the net in the past few years... As for you Milwaukee guys do you leave your XC batteries on the charger overnight. I used to do it with my old 18 V Dewalt sawzall battery's. I'm convinced that's what ruined the Milwaukee 48-11-1860 batteries and only give me about 15 minutes of run time a year down the road.

I have 3 XC 5.0 batteries that are all at about 50% charge right now. Do you guys just pop them all on the charger and head to bed and take them off at some point tomorrow or do you charge them and come back in a few hours later and take them off during the day??

I have also heard that people say it's not good to charge the battery unless it's fully depleted. For example one today was at 2 of the 4 led's so I charged it. Is that bad? Should I be running them fully down?

Wait it's bad to leave the batteries on the tools? I always do and I think a lot of others do too. My fuel drill and driver always have a battery attached. So they can stand on my work bench

"Quote 1: I take them off as soon as I noticed they are done, but I don't stress about them. I've left them overnight plenty of times. Modern battery controllers, lithium ion batteries, etc. aren't remotely as sensitive as the old stem packs."

"Quote 2: Agreed with that. I've read of several fires directly attributed to tool chargers. Every once in a while I forget but the mental lashing I give myself keeps me straight for a while. Most of the Chargers now a days have conditioners in them to protect the circuitry in a battery so we don't kill our tools but my biggest concern is fire. "

"Quote 3: Age and use caused the old batteries to get 15 minutes of run time. The Milwaukee 48-11-1850 batteries will eventually do the same down the road. The charger had nothing to do with it. As batteries age and get use, their performance deteriorates. You can help them along by not storing them in extreme temperatures, or if you don't use them for a long time, store them at 50% full.
The other reason the Milwaukee batteries gave you 15 minutes.. Well they were Milwaukee batteries."

"Quote 4: The old chargers were basically a power supply. No feedback from the battery. Lithium ion chargers need feedback for the constant current and constant voltage charging especially with the limits of different batteries on rapid chargers, so they've implemented most of that stuff you had to remember in the past into the charger. Used to be if a battery overheated you had to decide when it was cool enough to charge. Makita and I believe some others the charger will cool it before it starts charging. "

"Quote 5: Lithium batteries need a controller to handle charging so it doesn't really matter if you leave it on the charger. Basically most decent modern chargers will periodically top off the battery but lithium batteries don't drain quickly standing by so it's prob better to remove it from the charger but you don't have to worry about leaving it on the charger either. The things to avoid with lithium batteries is overheating them constantly and never leave them on a tool, especially when nearly depleted. If a tool goes into shutdown mode and the battery is depleted the battery should be removed immediately. Some experts seem to say it's good to deplete them to near zero once a month to condition them but I'm not sure that's necessary.

The reason it's really bad to leave a nearly dead battery on a tool is the Milwaukee 48-11-1880 battery is made up of a bunch of cells. All the cells aren't identical and some might be a little weaker and have a slightly lower voltage. If a single cell's voltage drops too low the controller on the pack will determine the whole pack is fubared and will refuse to charge it. That's why it's dangerous to leave a nearly depleted pack on a tool; as it discharges slowly over time the weakest cell might start to drop to or below the safe voltage threshold and when you go to pull the trigger it might do the cell in taking the whole pack out. It's possible if you have a voltage meter to take the pack apart and find the bad cell and either try to save it individually or replace it but if you avoid leaving depleted packs on your tools you can avoid all that."

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