KEYWORDS ridgid lifetime warranty ridgid cordless tool problems and praise home depot HD
hi all, i bought the following tools a month ago,
5" ridgid orbiting sander ridgid jigsaw
4 pack of ridgid 18volt cordless tools, here is some real world expierence for you to consider in your quest to find information
the orbiting sander is very smooth, has been used alot. i would estimate 10 hours in the last month and a half. it comes with 2 sander bases, one for sticky discs, another with velcro for the hook and loop pads, this has performed excelent! i am a big time dewalt fan for 10 years, but figured i would give ridgid a try considering i know they make some excelent heavy duty tools. the sander has a soft start feature that definately helps to not stress the motor, this soft start feature is also seen in my jig saw, very good idea!
the next item is the ridgid jig saw, it has been used in 4 projects and i would say it has been used for a total of 30 minutes continous timed running over a month. i have had no major problems with it, but a minor problem i found is the clear plastic cover used to keep wood or dust contained does come off sometimes, and i find it is sometimes easier to just leave it off when cutting. but other than that, i like it alot.
then i bought the 4 pack of cordless tools, the circular saw. the drill, the flashlight and the reciprocating saw. i will start with the flashlight, the flashlight is quite rugged, it has seen several 8 foot drops and the battery popped off once during one of those falls. i use the light alot, and finally burned out a bulb after a month of heavy use. they do include a spare bulb under the lens, but it is tricky to remove, i broke my spear bulb trying. i bought a 2 pack of 18V dewalt bulbs from HD and they work fine. ok now on to the circular saw.... it is smooth and quiet, but seems to get bogged down easily if the saw gets slightly twisted or the battery is less than half charged. i have not used it alot as of yet so thats all i have on it. next is the reciprocating saw, this saw has been thru some heavy duty abuse and has performed flawlessly during all of it. i put on an 8 inch blade and started hacking up a orange tree, over the course of the day i sawed off about 1/2 to 3/4 of the tree, and the saw acted normal the entire time, i do want to say that a fully charged battery pack would last about 10 minutes of continous hard sawing. more on the battery packs later. finally the cordless hammer drill, this drill has performed very well, under some various uses, the selectable gear range is great, it works great as a hammer drill, i bought a 5/8 cement bit and have done alot of hammerdrilling, no complaints there. i have one complaint tho......i was doing alot of slow and medium speed drilling, and the drill was getting quite warm in the upper handle area, i should have stopped to give the drill a break i suppose, but in the true nature of the tests i have been doing, i continued hot drill and all, well after about 20 minutes the drill stopped running slow, and now will only do a slight variable speed from about 75% to full output, i cant get it to creep anymore, when you squeeze thr trigger it jumps right up to 75% speed and ifd i fully press the trigger it goes full speed. i believe the problem will be a PWM control (pulse width modulator control) i intend to take it back to home depot.
finally the batterys... the lifetime warranty is the deciding factor in me buying the cordless kit, 18 v batts are expensive, so heres what i have observed from real world battery stats.. if the battery goes dead, and is about room temperature, it will charge in about 30 minutes. now if the battery is fairly hot, say from heavy tree cutting with the reciprocating saw, the charger will cool the battery with internal fand first by blowing air thru the battery, then it will charge, this process can take as much as an hour to cool the pack down and then the 30 minutes to charge giving you a full charge in 1.5 hours. that bugged me but i have learned to deal with it. overall i am very satisfied with my ridgid tool and might buy more, i have been looking at the angle grinder.
jackofalltrades