DeWalt News

DeWALT Focuses on ?Made in the USA?

DeWALT?s 1.2-million square foot facility that straddles the North/South Carolina border is now not only a distribution center, but also DeWALT?s fully functional Charlotte Manufacturing Operation, creating more than 350 new jobs.

Craig Zielinski, director of manufacturing, says DeWALT has determined that it now can make cordless power tools affordably and well here in America. Plus, end users want American-made tools.

Certain components of the tools are ?globally sourced,? because, Zielinski says, there simply aren?t stateside suppliers with the expertise for everything these days.

DeWALT currently maintains manufacturing facilities in six states, with components and accessories coming from three states. Since opening the Charlotte assembly plant, aka ?Project Eagle,? the company has launched Project Eagle II, to add cordless tool manufacturing in Greenfield, Indiana. All told, DeWALT employs approximately 1,800 people stateside. ? Chris Marsha

*Tools produced at the Charlotte facility include variations of 18-volt tools and 20V MAX* hammer drills, drill/drivers, impact drivers and recip saws.

**DeWALT?s Charlotte facility has assembled 4 million cordless tools, built 2 million electric motors and driven around 45 million screws since kicking off in 2013.

Reply to
Casper
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Good news Affordable cordless tools. This seems to be a trend or at least they are becoming less expensive. Several weeks ago Festool dropped the price of their replacement Li-Ion 5amp 15v battery to less that 1/2 of what it had been. Actually inexpensive compared to most any other brand.

Reply to
Leon

I recently looked at the DeWalt tools and was unimpressed. They were NICAD units, and were not marked on the outside. HD was selling them for a premium price, made me think they were Lithium. Opened the box and they were Nicad.. disappointed.

Also recently watched a YouTube video by this guy AVE, he opens the tools and does reviews. Their 20v unit was only 18volt same as the Milwakee, same batteries. ... Just a marketting sham. The Dewalt Hammer drill did not hammer through rock in the test.

So Dewalt is on my Buyer Beware list. You don't always get what you pay for.

Reply to
woodchucker

WHICH DeWalt tools. All of the 18v tools run on your choice of NiCd or Lithium--you can also get NiMH rebuilt packs that the DeWalt charger will charge.

The 20v MAX tools are lithium-only.

And the 20v is not "a marketing sham", it uses a different pack from the

18v tools and the reason is that that way the battery manager can be in the tool and charger allowing for much less expensive lithium packs than for the 18v tools. Calling it "20v" just keeps it from being confused with the 18v.
Reply to
J. Clarke

Well they are a little deceptive. Festool IIRC does the same thing. I noticed on the DeWalt site that the 20V would seem to indicate 20 volts. Oddly they don't say 20 volts. Their other tools do indicate voltage. So while a person would naturally assume that 20V means 20 volts, that apparently is not so.

Equally odd is that like voltage competitors may or may not last as long on a full charge doing the same thing as the others.

So when buying a cordless tool you can't really judge its power by it's assumed voltage. My "15" volt Festool runs circles around my "12" Makita impact and the impact would probably run circles around most any

20 volt driver drill.

I think the only thing that you can assume is that the larger the number, within a product line, the better it will perform within that product line. Not necessarily when compared to the competition with like assumed voltages.

Given that it appears most Li-Ion cells are 3.7 or 4.2 volts nether divides into 20 evenly. So they like Festool probably round the number. Keep in mind also that a normally functioning battery will indicate a higher voltage right after charging than it will a few minutes after use.

Reply to
Leon

They could have made it a bit less misleading by calling it 20L MAX. The "v" apparently does not represent actual voltage.

Reply to
Leon

Yes, I guess we'll have to start relying on specifications rather than meaningless labels..

Reply to
Bill

That's not unusual. It's a matter of where you measure the voltage on a battery. During charge, the voltage is a lot higher than a discharged battery. Since LiIon batteries have a terminal voltage somewhere in the 3.5V-4.2V range (depending on when you measure), it would be impossible to have both an 18V battery and a 20V battery. The same battery will be both, at different points in its charge cycle. I have Bosch batteries that are marked 10.8V and 12V. They're exactly the same batteries, for the same tools. The 10.8V batteries are the older batteries. I suspect that they were losing market share to the "more powerful" 12V tools, so the marketing department fixed the problem.

Reply to
krw

krw wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

While what you say about charging is true, there is a standard way to measure battery cells, and by that standard a LiIon cell is 1.2V. Any rating which is not a multiple of 1.2V is not measured by the standard (or is a flat out lie), and should be considered to be false advertising.

John

Reply to
John McCoy

So it was a drill. Yes, but the box was not marked. You would think it would say Nicad or Lithium on the box. That it would not have to be opened. two guys at HD could not find a marking. So we opened it.

the 20V is the same as the Milwakee 18v 5 batteries. 8350 I think.See the video where he take it apart.

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Reply to
woodchucker

So sue them.

Why do you care so much?

Reply to
J. Clarke

That's completely wrong. NiCd is "accepted" to be 1.2V, but NiCd has a very flat discharge curve. None of this is true with LiIon. LiIon will be somewhere between about 3.5V at discharge and 4.2V when charging (some charge to 4.1V). At a full charge, the terminal voltage will be about 4V. At "complete" discharge (it varies a little depending on how many cycles you want the battery to last, the terminal voltage is 3.5V-3.6V. There is also a little difference between LiIon varieties (LiIon vs. LiPo, for instance). An 18V or 20V battery will be five of these cells. 5 x 4V is 20V. 5 x 3.6V is 18V. Pick your poison. There is no 4.5 cell battery. An 18V LiIon battery is *exactly* the same as a 20V LiIon battery.

Reply to
krw

they should focus on quality control because no one focuses like we used to on where it is made

it is a good trend but i have one dewalt tool left i would say too little too late

their battery charging in their charger almost burned the house down another hour and it would have succeeded no longer have that drill

got a makita now and do not know or care where it was made it is a good drill

Reply to
Electric Comet

This is really old news about the batteries. I don't remember the exculpat ory language on their boxes, but they make it plain that the tool could hit a 20V output occasionally.

I had a long talk with the rep that sold DeWalt for about 5 years when I ra n into him at HD, and he told me one of the reasons he left DeWalt/BD was t hat he was tired of being screamed at for phony advertising from not only t he people that bought the tools but the vendors as well. He also told me h ow many people tested the batteries and found that they operated with the s ame output as their 18V tools, just did it longer.

From 2011:

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I remember how pissed off my contractor buddies were because there were act ual 20 and 24 volt tools out there, not 18s masquerading as 20V. A great ma rketing coup for DeWalt as most people never read the packaging or did any research on the new DeWalt schemes, never looked at an article and never us ed the internet. Since they paid a premium for the tools and the new side by side battery configuration wasn't compatible with the rest of their 18V DeWalt tools, the took them back.

Although I think DW was banking on the "Tim Taylor effect" of more power is good (and it certainly has worked well for them!), they said we as consume rs were protected from our own weak minded confusion by their false labels. I was happy to see that they lied for my benefit as I thought they were be ing intentionally deceptive. I was pleased to hear that corporate America was looking out for me.

I feel that if they will lie about something that simple, they will lie abo ut other things. Unless I got a steal on a DeWalt tool, I wouldn't touch t hem. My personal experience with them many years ago was great, but has be en so/so over the past few years, so they aren't anything I look at for too l purchase/replacement.

I doubt that "American made" will mean much as far as quality goes as manuf acturing skills have left us long ago. The hope would be that the complica ted pieces and parts for the tools would be made somewhere else where they have the technology and quality control to make them and ship them here for use. Then maybe, maybe they could train people to screw the pieces togeth er.

Guess we'll see.

Robert

Reply to
nailshooter41

The US has the ability to make a quality tool, but between Marketing and Accounting, hitting a low price point with high volume is more important. There was a time that Black & Decker meant quality too, now they are cheapened for the mass market, not the skilled craftsman. DeWalt is just a half step above that in yellow.

I do have two DeWalt tools, a sander and miter saw. Both are serviceable for the price, but there are better out there.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

them back.

I've got a question for you. How would YOU write an "honest label" for a Dewalt power tool that made it absolutely crystal clear that (a) it was an 18v tool and (b) there was no way to make the tool run in any useful manner on the batteries made for the previous series of 18v dewalt tools.

Reply to
J. Clarke

Most of my deWalt tools have taken 15 years of beating. I do have some newer ones as I recently had a huge increase in disposable income and I'm looking to complete my 18v collection before they're discontinued.

Reply to
J. Clarke

Ummmmm, 18 volt Lithium Ion

Reply to
Leon

No wonder you are so defensive. And judging by what you display that you do with those tools it is no wonder that they have lasted 15 years. I have a 30 year old B&D belt sander, the belt that is on it is 25 years old.

Reply to
Leon

And just one more thing, there is no reason that an 18 volt battery of a different chemical make up should not work. Festool allows you to use any same shape battery, equal or lower voltage battery, or different chemical make up battery in their cordless tools. Their Li-ion charger will charge any same shape, regardless of chemical make up, battery.

Reply to
Leon

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