No compact 10.8v drills - has everyone gone power mad?

I have a pair of 10.8V drill/drivers (handy avoid keep having to swap pilot drill/countersink and screwdriver bits)

Even at the time I got them, it seemed 10.8V was being phased-out for

Makita still do a fairly large range of 10.8V tools, but they seem to have moved away from the slim "in handle" battery design for a more traditional wide batt.

Some of the Bosch ones in a similar format are still available:

Bosch 10.8V are now 12V but can be used with the 10.8V battery.

But if you use a 10.8v battery is it a neat 'seamless' handle?

In message snipped-for-privacy@esprimo.zbmc.eu>, Chris Green snipped-for-privacy@isbd.net writes

Marketing?

Everyone, including you and me:-) already has an early version of battery hand tools! Mostly with batteries that are overdue for replacement.

New sales are based on better performance/features.

The old maxim applies, you can have too little power but you can never have too much.

Richard

That's just the old marketing vs technical MOAAR POWAH! argument

Yes you can have too much, my Metabo 12v cordless driver (N.B. not an imapct driver) shears m4 and m5 screws quite easily! :-)

The little 10.8v impact driver is *much* more practical for just about everything I do. It's still working fine, batteries sound, etc. I just want *another* so that I can keep it/them in two places.

Oh yes you can! Tail happy sports cars come to mind

Actually its 3.7V and 4.2V

Of course the voltage is supremely irrelevant and goes back to the days when all there was was a 600mAh 1.2v sub C nickel cell. If you wanted more capacity you had to stack em in series.

And you can wind a motor for any voltage you want. And build a lithium cell to any capacity you want...

I can recommend Metabo 10.8 drill/drivers (mine came with a handy angled drive attachments). The batteries are quite small and last a very long time between charges.

I don't really understand the question. What's wrong with this?

Contact resistance and electronics tend to favour a higher voltage lower current. The limit being what is considered safe for the human body and how many cells you can get in a package.

Not necessarily. There is a broad sweet spot between 10v and 200V. and

And calculations show that where motors are concerned the same weight of copper in a few fat turns or a lot of thin ones ends up the same if you adjust the voltage..

To be sure if you are cheapskating the power FETS a higher voltage lower current is a bit less demanding in terms of 'on resistance'

And wires in excess of 100A get pretty unweildy.

Battery contact resistance and general wiring in a cordless tool can be significant. I think an earlier post established a typical stall current.

There is a gradual loss of efficiency of windings with thin wire where insulation takes a higher proportion of wire diameter. I doubt that will be much of an issue with cordless tools.

This is all about cost.

For extended periods, yes, as do contacts.

Other thing is a full sized cordless usually has a 1/2" chuck. Which won't take small drills. As well as being a bit heavy for electronics stuff where you rarely need large drills or much power, but do need to drill holes larger than a hobby drill can manage. I had a nice little 7.2v Russell which was a good screwdriver too - but getting long in the tooth with Ni-Cad batteries, and a key chuck.

I got a nice 10.8v 1.3 amp.hr Li-Ion from Lidl as a replacement. Battery fits inside the handle. Not really looked, but they do still seem to offer some tools with the same sort of battery, so the drills may also come up.

I prefer the Rolls Royce version - adequate.

Surely any half decent drill designed for screwdriving has torque setting? Even my cheap, cheerful and ancient Russell does.

Bosch used to make one about 7 years ago. I wonder what the perceived problem was? Brian