jeffmcmillan

An 18V battery has 5 (or 5 pairs) of lithium ion cells in series with nominal 3.6V each adding up to 18V. The voltage without load, however, can be higher such as 4V which can result in the battery appearing to be charged to 20V or more. This is why Dewalt markets their newer 18V tools at 20V tools.

I can't wait. Looks like a huge motor packed into those.

That's where the three speeds come in. Speed 1 is pretty unlikely to damage small fasteners.

Something like these will work in an impact driver or drill without adapters. Those particular ones will not hold up to heavy use in an impact driver, but chances are they will work fine for you, and good extended impact rated hex bits are going to be much more expensive. To use drill bits in your impact driver, you can buy bits with a 1/4 hex shank, use a small chuck that fits in the impact driver, or use bit holders for specific sizes (these usually have a countersink incorporated for screws in wood)

Those look almost the same as tuckpointing guards most manufacturers already make. Nice to have something with a foot more designed for cutting though.

Better to make the tools fit into an existing category when a project manager is making purchases. Someone told to purchase certain tools in 36V, 18V, and 12V for a project could easily overlook 21.6V Hilti tools. Of course if you're marketing to some schmuck wandering through Home Depot, those extra two volts are going to sell your product.

Hilti basically did the opposite of dewalt marketing 21.6 as 18 vs marketing 18 as 20

I just lost my set of ancient cold chisels and punches. Those things seemed to take any sort of abuse, but I've heard pretty much all the newer sets are too soft. I can't tell if that's just poor quality control or if my search is hopeless. What cold chisels do you all use?

No problem. The lack of grip is a big downside with Fein grinders. Unfortunate because everything else is well done. Sorry I can't comment on Flex, but I don't have any experience with them.

Seems like there's always a sale on one or another of those. It's like they're trying to give out free crack and get everyone hooked.

Or get two for next time some smartass overtightens a blade bolt =P http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N9VAARU/ Every saw I can remember dealing with used an M6 bolt (sorry I got my metric confused earlier thinking M8 was the 1/4 equivalent instead of 3/8 equivalent) with the only difference being thread direction for the blade direction. That means almost any miter saw or blade left circular saw will have interchangeable bolts.

It's left handed thread, almost certainly M8. Whoops, actually M6. I got my metric sizes mixed up.

It may have been something in the title or post that wasnt caught by an input sanitization filter and caused the glitch. Try posting a thread with just filler text then editing your content in. I thought milwaukee also announced 6ah batteries at their advertising event. Regardless there were some in the background of an oztooltalk video from a milwaukee event in australia.

For masonry you want a slide switch and a lot of power otherwise you'll be sitting there a long time with cramped hands. These four are good ones to consider. Metabo WEPBA 17-125 Fein WSG 15-125 Makita GA5042 (GA5042CX1 comes with tuckpoint guard) Bosch AG50-11vs (has variable speed but slightly less power)

Those are some pretty specific requirements. What will you use this for most, cutting, grinding, or masonry work? You should look at Makita too, because it's the only brand I know of besides Metabo with anti vibration control in their grinders.

I'm guessing that 1000W is measured the same way as shop vac power (many claim more power than can be drawn without tripping a breaker) 1000Watt / 18Volt = 55.6Amp 6Amp-Hour / 55.6Amp = 6.5 Minutes Maybe Milwaukee's 9Ah battery can support a +50Amp load, but I doubt the smaller number of cells based on the battery shape can support that. Even if that's the actual input power, that runtime would make the drill practically useless. Don't get me wrong, that's an impressively overengineered drill is some ways but for that price they could do so much better. Edit: After watching a video on their website I'm unimpressed. I've seen drills dropped so far the case cracked open with less chuck wobble than that.

I just checked, and all the long bits I could find have about 1mm of play including Makita double ended. I noticed on the Makita bits, the drive head is ground right out of the hexagonal stock rather than turning it down to a smaller circle first, which probably explains the better grip over most double ended bits. I also just noticed my PH3 has a thicker torsion zone than the PH2, probably to give more impact to larger fasteners. They definitely put some engineering into those bits.

I haven't noticed any wobble with the 3.5" double ended makita bits.

When I'm choosing bits it's the gold makita ones. Like you said, not outstanding, just good bits which is all I really want. I've lost some and broken off screw heads but never damaged a bit. Maybe others like ribbed or diamond coated are better, but the makita bits work well enough and are cheap enough I don't see a point in looking for different bits. I've used plenty of other bit types when they're available on site and nothing seemed to work any better.

A related thing that also surprised me is the need to physically switch between the two batteries. It could easily be set to either run down the battery with a lower charge then switch to the other, or always use the battery in one slot first, but requiring the user to physically switch batteries just shows a lack of effort in the design of what will probably be their flagship lawn care product. Just sticking a three position switch between the two batteries is a bit of a copout.

I'd be interested to see the power for driving lags and drilling with auger bits. Most reviews ignore those aspects and stick with the nuts and bolts of it.

The only benefit of the original shockwave bits is they're too soft to really strip out screws. The worst is jobsites that provide shockwave bits. I've heard mixed reviews about the new shockwaves, but I'm hesitant to try them when even the teeth on milwaukee pliers are soft.

I might try just that. Problem is that becomes really difficult with these brushless motors. Old brushed motors, you could just up the voltage and the motor would complain and burn up after not too long, but it would still work. Most brushless controllers will detect the wrong voltage and either shut down or just regulate the higher voltage down to the intended voltage for the motor. Easiest related hack was to rewire a 3Ah 18V battery to a 1.5Ah 36V battery back when nothing had a controller. Those were good times.

That looks great. I like the idea of keeping a few containers for small stuff and the rest for tools.