ToolBane

I noticed a bunch of them invaded the Ryobi FB group maybe a couple months ago purely to troll everyone there. It’s already sad enough on its own but what should be outright embarrassing is when anyone and everyone who knows anything about tools know they’re both owned and managed by TTI. The two brands almost certainly share a lot of parts, actually...

I would have LOVED to be able to do a band-pass but there wasn’t enough volume to make it work. It was a tight enough fit as it was, I went over the top trying to squeeze extra volume in anywhere I could just to get the enclosure to reach down to 40Hz.

You seriously have that? Where did you find them? I’ve been looking everywhere for some!

Unfortunately corner loading won’t be feasible due to what they’re being mounted on. Once installed (behind the cheeks of this bunny’s face on this art car), the woofers will fire out while the ports will be aimed toward the ground. Having to fit under the cheeks is what necessitates the unusual shape of the enclosures. The fact that the vehicle is much smaller in every dimension compared to the wavelength of the frequencies we want to emphasize makes this a difficult technical challenge. The downward firing of the ports hopefully will provide a modicum of bass reinforcement but it probably won’t be much. The size of them is necessitated by the large air volume they have to move. I wish I could have made them bigger, if anything.

I finished these up pretty recently. Can’t tell exactly how good they are yet as it’s hard to find a place to properly test them at full volume. It was a fun project but ended up a lot more complicated than I originally intended it to be.

I’m tempted to think the Makita ads are claiming about 30-40% longer run time with the thin kerfs compared to their more standard blades. And sure they’re their own ads but Makita’s ads tend to be a bit more responsible than those of some other manufacturers. 30-40% may matter a lot for jobsites, but to be perfectly honest the runtime of these Makita miters with a pair of 5Ah batteries even with ordinary blades is crazy long for my personal utilities. Mitering even for “large” projects for me would be unlikely to consume more than a charge cycle or two on regular Diablo blades, divided over several days, with the batteries swapped between several other tools in the interim.

Metabo and Kobalt both got in some good representation in this one. Nice to see some variety in my opinion.

https://www.acmetools.com/shop/tools/metabo-hpt-c3610drjq4m?cm_mmc=Bing-_-PRODUCTFEED-_-METABO HPT-_-C3610DRJQ4M&CAWELAID=600009240005524367&CATARGETID=600009240005406776&CADEVICE=m&msclkid=1fa463c7c20817f5b58e3f24cc28f806&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=CA Bing Shopping&utm_term=4579534649816736&utm_content=GS_All Products Catchall

Sorry to hear they bludgeon you so hard on batteries. Oh and to what you were talking about with the weight of the Dewalt 12” already being a lot... This Makita is being listed at 70lbs (32kg) with batteries, not much different from that Dewalt. Even the 10” is supposedly like 60lbs (27kg). The 7.5” (190mm) is only 29lbs (13kg) though.

Where is “here” for you? Makita batteries do tend to be a bit of a premium compared to competitors in the US, but it’s not too ridiculous in my opinion if you catch the intermittent (and somewhat predictable) sales. Is it even worse elsewhere? Also, as far as the thin kerf blade is concerned, we’re talking about a miter saw on rails, not a circular saw you’re free-handing down the length of a 4x8. If that somehow manages to still be a problem, just get another blade. I’m going to be doing that right out of the gate anyway because so many of my cuts are into assorted plastics.

Paulengr I appreciate the thought-out post and numerous examples, but all these tool companies based in every corner of the world didn’t all arrive at the same solution in a vacuum. China isn’t automatically merely “cheap” anymore and hasn’t been for a very long time...they have made tremendous advancements in expanding their manufacturing quality and control and can do things at prices corporations marketing tools and everything else would be foolish to not utilize. Where else in the world can you reliably or even feasibly manufacture 4K TVs, cell phones, etc with such levels of accuracy, reliability, and quantity at prices remotely reasonable to bring to the market? The simultaneous existence of less-impressive business practices also found in China doesn’t negate all that any more than it does when we talk about shady used car salesmen in the US who happens to sell a few F150s. Although I completely agree things will change just as you suggest as China becomes wealthier and their labor becomes more expensive. But that’s a separate issue from these tariffs. China outsourcing production elsewhere in Asia in recent years has everything to do with their increased domestic production costs and essentially nothing to do with any tariffs. On that note, I do agree with BMack37’s take that increasing manufacturing in Mexico among other countries south of the US border could come around to making a lot of sense. I even think it would be smart politics but that would delve into...well...politics.

Maffel? As in, across the board? It’s not a surprise if a few tools from a few companies are (at least mostly) manufactured with zero contribution from China, but for the entire product line at every step is something special. Albeit less surprising for a premium company.

If you’re smart enough to find everything it probably isn’t a stupid idea...IF averaged across enough tools that aren’t going to be to terribly abused. You’d be forgoing any warranty, which most of the time won’t be an issue. Given sufficient intelligence to assemble the things, which in my opinion should be pretty commonplace yet manages to not be...it makes a lot of sense. Admittedly at this stage of my life I’m not likely to do this myself because the time involved isn’t worthy the cost savings. But in my collegiate years and even early adulthood I would absolutely do it.

Dewalt should have delayed releasing the Atomic until they could design a suitable impact driver. They did go with the right form factor on the drill in my opinion, emphasizing a little more on short vs narrow relative to the Makita subcompact. I’ll be interested in seeing a performance comparison test sometime. But holding the Atomic impact in my hand, I’m incredulous even seeing how they could think labeling it Atomic made any sense.

No one should expect the power to be all that huge with these things (yet), regardless of who makes them. This could keep a laptop charged, or power a small boom box for a bit. That being the case, I might pick one up anyway.

I wouldn’t say delicate so much as high-strung. They’re small in order to achieve a form-factor and passing a lot of current for the purposes of doing a lot of work for their size. I don’t know how fast yours went out but there could have been a little more to cause that, like the thing getting jammed causing larger pulse of emf than would be typical of most tools. Last I saw Makita actually only uses a handful of different brushless motors (all built internally), so the motor in the router is likely the same as in a number of their other tools.

I’d say you’re probably hoping for too much. Pretty much everyone manufactures considerable amounts of their products in China because it’s flat-out the smartest way to go, and the tariffs aren’t at all likely to increase the production costs enough to change that equation.

I actually bought one to use with my assorted Dremel bits. It’s worked just fine so far, although I don’t think it has a speed adjustment? Don’t remember as I’ve only needed for little things here and there so far.

It’s been noted for a lot of tools that using batteries that have more banks, such as a standard 5Ah battery (2 banks of 5 cells) vs a compact 2Ah battery (1 bank of 5 cells), will help the tool perform better. Speculatively, if a tool was designed using batteries of lower current output, the higher current of batteries that have more banks could also cause the tool to get hotter and over time that could lead to shorter tool life. It probably wouldn’t be to a degree that would be obviously noticeable to most people and most tools. With all that said, you’re saying Makita’s 3Ah batteries fit and those are already 2-bank batteries. As of right now Makita doesn’t make batteries that run anything more than 2-banks, and the current difference with their larger Ah batteries would not be terribly significant. Mostly the tool would just run longer.

Cool move in my opinion

https://www.makitatools.com/products/details/XSL08Z Officially on their US official site. Glad I held off getting the 10” that’s been out the last couple years.

One of those YouTube things pointed out they aren’t indicating “made in the USA with global materials” on these and have just resigned to manufacturing these overseas. I wonder if the attempt to do even that little amount of assembly domestically on previous products is costing them more than they’re letting on and they’re going to be using products like these to recoup their losses. They know most of their regular clientele will buy them regardless. Which technically is fine...the drill sounds like it’s actually pretty good for its compactness, the impact may be kinda meh but if it gets the job done...

Batteries *can* actually be more powerful than corded. First off, a power cord carries resistance the significance of which increases the more powerful the tool is and the longer the cord is. Second, DC current as a battery provides is always running a constant voltage while AC swings back and forth from positive to negative, passing through 0 voltage 120 times per second. To make the same power with AC requires the same RMS “area under the curve” which depending on how they do things typically would require feeding bigger peak voltages into the motor the current of which they can’t necessarily handle. Sorry, that’s probably a mouthful. I move my miter and table saws (both 10”) all the time because as a hobbyist I don’t (yet) have a permanent spot for them and I can’t stand toiling with where to place and angle them in relationship to outlets, having to move my cars around etc. I can’t wait to simply be able to drop my miter where I like and leave the battery charger at the outlet however many feet away. My table saw being corded I’ll have to devise a dedicated solution to in the long-term. Still I imagine for many people having the option to run a cord would be a good idea even if I don’t strongly care for it. It’s one good feature about the Dewalt 120V Flexvolt miter that Makita might want to consider going with.

I’m glad I happened to wait because I’ve been eyeballing the 10” X2 for probably over a year. It’s pretty uncommon I need to cut 4+ inches but it does come up.

Someone came across this and posted in regards to Makita also now releasing high efficiency miter saw blades in both 10” and 12”