Has anyone bought one of these yet?
I can't see the point of such a drill if it has not got an SDS (pneumatic) system - that is unless you're drilling thermalite blocks.
What is this drill going to do that a normal 12-15 v drill wont do?
dg
Everything being equal, the only way to increase battery life is by increasing voltage, as the individual cell size stays the same. Quite why they all use the same size cell - which isn't the largest commonly available - I don't know.
Increase upper arm strength? Its going to be very heavy I would have thought??
Darren
I concur with that - I bought a cheapo 7.2V drill a while back, one of these giveaway sales in the DIY sheds I think. Didn't actually go out to acquire one, but I thought "hey, I can probably make use of that".
I did make use of it. Problem was that it was too puny. Drill a few holes in wood and it would need recharging (an overnight job).
So I recently invested in a NuTool 24V with spare battery pack and 1 hour charger. A world of difference - I can keep drilling for a lot longer, and when it discharges I switch batteries and recharge the dead one. Never without a battery drill now.
I have a 7.2V drill here not being used....hmm, I've just thought of something else I can sell on ebay!
PoP
I think you answered your own question Dave - so that you have to buy a higher priced pack from the manufacturer.
.andy
To email, substitute .nospam with .gl
One of our sparkies has just bought himself a 36v SDS and it's a beast. The battery's come with an umbilical cord and fasten to your belt - good job really as the drill on its own looks like something Arnie Farmer would use in a terminator film and weighs accordingly! Richard
The actual cells are readily available aftermarket from a number of suppliers. What I wondered is just why they are 'sub c' rather than 'd' size.
There'd be no voltage gain for the same number of cells but the weight increase would be noticeable especially if you use it as part of your job. Richard
But at the level of physics and engineering reality, rather than marketing fluff, it's the *capacity* of the pack for retaining *charge*
- and providing it in the form of peak current when used - which matters,
*not* the voltage. You get the same energy stored in one large cell at 1.2V as in two which have half the size but are connected in series at 2.4V. But the marketing flummery always wants a single "figure of merit", and frequently focuses on something which is not the sole determinant of performance/fitness-for-purpose. So it is with cordless tools: yes, you get more charge from having more cells of the same size, and if you connect them all in series (makes for simpler charging arrangements, and allows thinner wires to carry a given power) the voltage goes up simply as the number of cells. But you'd get just as much of a capacity increase, and probably an increased ability to deliver peak currents, if you (as the tool designer) swapped the sub-D size cells used in nearly all cordless tools for C-size ones, as Dave was suggesting.A few battery packs do bother to mark their capacity in mAh (milli-amp-hours), but it's a rarity. There's a concession to marketing in the choice of units anyway - after all, 1500mAh sounds so much better than 1.5Ah - why, there's
*thousands* of 'em! - and avoids invideous comparison with lead-acid batteries ("hmm, my little runabout car's battery says 60Ah, oh well, maybe that's why it's so much bigger'n'heavier than this Performance Pro Professional Powerful Putt-Putt MightyNuTule"). As for coulombs - forget them altogether, filthy foreign-named units ;-)I continue to find the "bigger numbers" trend in cordless tools amusing. For most of us, the advantage of a cordless is its lower weight and manouverability; for the heftier jobs a mains-powered tool is more practical, and cheaper, than straining up the "voltage" scale with increasingly heavy and unwieldy cordless-but-bicep-building tools. Sure, there are construction workers for whom beefy cordless is handier than trailing 110V yellow cables everywhere, but for the weekend d-i-y warrior, the combination of well-built lighter smaller cordless + brutish mains powered is smarter, better adapted to the range of jobs, and no pricier, than a single all-in 24-glorious-volts jobbie...
Stefek
As in engines. cc is the determining factor. Power to weight ratio is.
I fully agree.
I threw out a cheapo 'Power Devil' battery powered drill t'other day, on account of it being s**te. Before so doing I undid the battery pack to see if it was worth saving for anything. Inside the '12V' battery pack (hey, this is some high-powered stuff here) were ten NiCd cells as you might expect. What I didn't expect was the free fresh air also enclosed; they were AA cells stuck together with tape, glue, bits of plastic and copious air.
That's why it was crap, and not even worth the £9.99. The sad part is, I don't suppose I'll learn from this. Free air - hey, I'll have some of that!
Cheers
Well, yes, but then higher voltage drills are being discussed, and those will be heavier because of the greater number of cells. My query was why not use the larger capacity cells on a lower voltage drill - it is, after all, the length the battery lasts for a given power that matters to most - assuming the weight is the same.
I think there ought to be a new uk.d-i-y rule of thumb: Never buy a cordless power tool if the whole thing including charger and batteries costs less than what you would expect to pay for the cells alone!
(CPCs price for a 2Ah sub C industrial tagged cell is 1.85 each)
IT is worth buying for the cells alone and ditching the drill. At £9.99, I can't see people complain.
10 quid for 10 el cheapo AAs welded together? You'll get better quality on ebay for less. And brand new cells.
Well for starters you can get 10 reasonably decent AA NiCd cells from CPC for 7.99 (order code BTGP60AAK-466) so 9.99 is not exactly a bargain. And secondly the cells you get in some of these tools are about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike!
I am not saying there is no place for budget cordless tools - just that there is a quality threshold - when you fall below this the tool becomes more use as an ornament.
I'd like to see the cordless drill which can start a car engine...
It takes quite a bit of energy to get a large internal combustion engine going.
1) Tie vehicle to a post at the top of a hill. 2) Undo screws holding rope with cordless drill. 3) Release clutch on the way down the hill.
Job done.
PoP
That clearly wouldn't work around here. There aren't enough hills.
How about:
1) Weld car key to piece of round steel bar. 2) Place steel into drill chuck. 3) Place key in ignition switch. 4) Gently squeeze trigger on drill.Colin
3a) reduce torque setting to avoid knacking lock and/or key :)
cheers
witchy/binarydinosaurs
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