ToolBane

I wouldn’t expect it but Makita already had the best planer then decided out of nowhere to make an even better, brushless one. So maybe with that development Dewalt will feel obligated to respond. On the other hand, Dewalt does have larger-capacity batteries and that does make a difference...assuming the extra power output doesn’t wear down the tool down too much faster.

The Japanese market will be the first to see it. Could easily be a year or more before we start to see them much anywhere else.

Mostly I love the thing when I’m loitering in the same place (sports bar etc) for many hours. Although I seldom do that outside college football season. Will keep the phone charged all day, though. I’ve decided I prefer the CXT one by a hair because it’s more discrete, easier to fit in a pocket, and the 4Ah battery can still keep the phone going long enough for pretty much any occasion.

Well I’ll be hoping this proves to be true in the near-term. For all we know they could be speculating themselves, though. Makita seems to do a good job keeping things “close to the vest” when it comes to such things.

Looks cool. That 12HD battery looks so funny on that little charger.

Makita is ahead on batteries where they want to be...these XGT batteries appear to be charging in about half the time of their 18V Watt-hour equivalents, which were already faster than the rest of the market (and mostly still are) for quite some time. Sadly it just seems Makita wants everyone to believe they’ve really dug into their current decision against anything larger than 6Ah for the time being. It’s their business they can do what they want and I’m not about to ditch the platform, but it should be obvious the market is responding negatively to it. This isn’t going to just be about losing current people, but getting fewer new adopters as time goes on. Although I think it’s fantastic they’re continuing to innovate in other directions to improve efficiency further, with all the thin kerf blades coming out and just general mechanical efficiency within the tools themselves. I hope they continue to pursue those avenues as it will make them even more advantageous if/when they do come to their senses and finally release larger batteries. To me LXT needs nothing more than an 8Ah, which they themselves have already proven really would not be that substantially larger than their 3-6Ah units, only requiring 10 of the 21700 cells. I’m hard-pressed to see the need for the 15-cell behemoths the red and yellow teams have released. Not only are 21700 cells advantageous for larger batteries, but now they can do single-bank batteries with 21700 cells that can be up to 4Ah. They can use them in CXT batteries either as compact single-bank or larger-capacity duel bank. Single-bank 21700 batteries could make a whole lot of sense for compact tools that still need more power than Makita’s smallest batteries. Yet Makita seems to be passing up on ALL of these potential product options, not just the one we’re talking about in this thread. Makes one wonder if they have some specific concern or issue with the cells themselves.

Milwaukee is a great marketing company. They’ve put money into making an impressive drill and impact because that’s often what people start with. After that things get more trade-specific. If you’re more about woodworking they aren’t that great. Plumbing and automotive are often touted as their strong-points. I don’t see any point in replacing an entire line of cordless tools with another entire line of cordless tools unless you just have money to burn. Milwaukee is a great company for that, as they’ll have a new “generation” every year or so for you to replace your old one with assuming it’s lasted that long. Just listening to word-of-mouth, it just feels like they’re moving their business model in that direction. Making tools that perform really well for a bit and who cares if it doesn’t last when they can constantly woo you into the next model only a year later.

A little irony just crossed my mind... With the batteries already available in X2 tools right now, XGT will actually have a hard time playing the part of the heavy-duty tool range. The 4Ah 40V Max XGT battery actually has less watt hours per charge than a pair of 5 or 6Ah batteries in X2. The only ways around this would be to either: A- release an even bigger 6Ah 40V Max battery (equivalent to Milwaukee’s 12Ah 18V High Demand, or Dewalt’s 4Ah 60V Max), or... B- create X2 variants of their XGT tools What a conundrum for Makita I suspect this will be. It’s easy to forget that compared to X2, Flexvolt and High Demand really only barely caught up in terms of total watt hours per charge with their latest oversized batteries, and I suspect they are unlikely to be compelled to push further, at least not until the next major generation of battery technology comes out. But XGT as of this moment is actually a downgrade for high-power tools for the time being.

Does he ever sound like he has a strong preference for anything? If he likes Bosch, that certainly isn’t a bad drill. Makita and Hilti are both good too. Thing about cordless power tools, most people will want to avoid the clutter of too many different brands, as they all have their own batteries and chargers that are not compatible. So buying him a new cordless drill could in some ways be tying him to a platform. Does he already have any newer cordless tools that use modern lithium batteries? If so you may simply want to stay within that platform. If no, try to go with a brand you know he already likes, or bare minimum avoid any brands he has any express distaste for. The Hilti has one drawback in that they are expensive, and he may not want to feel pre-committed to staying on that platform if he needs to buy additional tools. The Makita is pretty solid. Bosch as well. When it comes to drills, stay above the cheap stuff and you really don’t have to be too picky about brands these days. So you may effectively be shopping more between battery platforms, which understandably may be more involved than what you were planning for.

Go with newer lithium stuff. You won’t regret it.

It’s weird to me how fanboyism in tools sometimes rivals what I remember seeing in video game consoles. Some posts here aren’t significantly different from what I remember seeing from teenagers arguing PS2 vs GameCube back in the day. When talking about light equipment, having an entirely different battery system makes a lot of sense. The amount of energy consumed necessitates MUCH bigger batteries. May as well optimize the voltage used along the way. It just is what it is. I don’t ding Milwaukee on this decision one iota.

It may have been better to start a separate thread for this one, but that’s okay. Among the choices you have linked in the article, I would just try the first Black And Decker. It’s cheap and probably more than enough unless it breaks prematurely. It’s not a brand that’s likely to magically permanently disappear with any potentially unscrupulous students, and even if it did, you wouldn’t be out of much money for it. The Dewalt is likely to be overkill for your purposes because it’s actually an impact driver which can mess up the threading and heads on your racks over time. Especially in the hands of large numbers of students over time, a nontrivial percentage of which won’t know how to handle tools and won’t see the pitfalls of overtightening small bolts etc and will compulsively overtighten needlessly. Black And Decker and Dewalt are actually under shared ownership, with Dewalt being the higher-end line, and Dewalt has their own cordless screwdriver which I’ve seen in stock at most Home Depot’s, which I’m pretty sure is just a mildly upgraded version of the B&D screwdriver you have linked. But as the higher-end line, potential theft could be more of a concern. The article you have is so dominated by Dewalt and B&D it’s hard not to see it as a paid ad masquerading as a review, and an amateurish one at that given how many products they have listed that are actually rather poor matches for simple screw driving, but at least they also happened to list a couple other good brands.

I’d suggest getting some spare scrap to play with a little bit so you can get a feel for it. If you’re able, it’s best to ascertain if it’s plexiglass vs polycarbonate just so you know the scrap you’re working with is exactly the same material. Polycarbonate generally has better impact resistance for this purpose FYI, and is probably what you actually have if it’s either the original windshield itself or an aftermarket part specifically designed for this purpose. Not sure how you’re going about this but I would NOT buy plexiglass to make a windshield out of; it doesn’t have the impact resistance polycarbonate has. Anyway, if you haven’t already, chances are good you can find a plastic supply store that can sell you scrap for nicely discounted prices. The melting point for these plastics isn’t terribly high. If cutting with a jigsaw, as the blade heats up during cutting, semi-melted plastic shavings can easily bond right back into the cut or on the surface of your workpiece as you proceed. If this is a stock sheet bought from a plastic supply store, you should leave the paper/plastic backing on the sheet while cutting to help counteract that problem. If that isn’t an option, using some sort of a blower to keep the blade from heating up too much as you go can also be very helpful. I don’t have your specific jigsaw but in general I would just start off with medium cut speeds to get an initial feel. My general feeling is, pacing how fast you go through the material to avoid the blade heating up too much is more important than the speed setting of the jigsaw. So cut an inch or whatever, let the blade cool, then proceed another inch, etc. Disclaimer: I have not cut anywhere near as much polycarbonate as I have plexiglass, and it’s been a while so I easily may be forgetting any nuances between how the materials cut if in fact you have polycarbonate and not plexiglass. Hope this helps and best of luck!

The backpack that Makita seems to want to sell instead of larger batteries sounds cool in theory but is needlessly clunky in what few pictures I’ve seen. It does make for an alternative but only 4 of their standard 10-cell batteries seems like they should easily be fit in something much smaller.

At least two other brands for me

It’s entirely possible they may make an adapter similar to what they already did with their previous 36V platform that allows you to use a pair of LXT batteries on XGT tools basically X2-style. I almost think it more likely to happen than not. We pretty much all agree. And given how meticulous the design of the XGT 4Ah battery is, it’s hard to picture Makita not already having an essentially finished 8Ah LXT battery already designed; more a question of whether or not they’re willing to now, and how long it takes if they really are hesitating needlessly as some people are speculating.

So far they’re saying they still have more X2 tools planned and have no intention of changing that...we’ll see if that continues to be the case years down the road, but I won’t doubt it for now. Chances are if nothing else they still have some coming down the pipeline and they may as well get their return on investment. Much like the recent 12” X2 miter saw. If I were to hazard a guess, I kinda expect X2 will continue to be their high-power LXT solution for the foreseeable future. At first a lot of the buzz about this had me a little concerned about LXT support. But thinking about it now, it’s much the opposite. They have plenty of other battery lines they toy around with around the world. They’re pretty committed it seems to growing a healthy CXT line, and there’s no reason to believe that is some threat to LXT either. This just isn’t anything to worry about for LXT users at all. Other than some might end up being really awesome and envy-inducing.

This sort of thing is almost never not going to be either accumulation of gunk, depletion of adequate grease, or both. With two years on it, I would suspect mostly the former. But if you fix it yourself you may as well regrease along the way anyway. I imagine it to be a pretty trivial thing to take apart and clean out but I don’t own the thing yet.

Pretty cool

I thought it was only 25 but Dewalt is making wall warts

The current LXT multitool is definitely clunky. Even if that’s the norm for the industry. Makita has been excelling at making tools ergonomically sensible, and this just seems like a natural best next step. I guess they likely have a team working on it but it’s probably no small technical challenge.

When given the option, I would absolutely do 1/2” whenever possible

I was primarily Dewalt most of my life but as soon as I went cordless I wasn’t going to be interested in any platforms that gamed their customers with major format changes etc. Which I expected from some of them not just because there was sure to be flux over the years as battery technology got better but because corporations know how to make a killing exploiting customer loyalty. Designed obsolescence, needless format changes, wanky marketing etc...it’s all over the modern tool market and consumers do themselves a disservice refusing to acknowledge and be mindful of that. Relative to some of the other major players in the market, Makita simply struck as more stable than the usual suspects by those metrics. Even contrary to what some people are getting skittish about with this new XGT platform, I don’t see Makita gaming anyone with it so much as simply having a parallel platform that accommodates the particular desires of some of their customer base. More important than that though, Makita also struck as more precision-oriented (or perhaps carpenter-friendly), which solved another shortcoming I always experienced with Dewalt. I get much cleaner results with Makita more consistently with less toiling. So the platform has lived up to my needs. I don’t need the mega-gootchie Mafell or Festool stuff. I have enough hobbies I spend too much money on and would prefer to steer clear of even more tools I never knew I needed. Dewalt has its primary customer base which is obviously framing and construction. It’s good for businesses to have products optimized for their needs but ultimately Dewalt is not the best platform for most of my needs and quite possibly even most of their consumer base, who like me in my younger years simply bought it because people I knew (my dad, in this case) did. Not being able to get better than 1/8” precision without constantly recalibrating tools doesn’t matter when framing houses but it’s obnoxious when trying to build indoor furniture etc. So it was great that I broke out and researched the market before deciding on my primary platform.

What I find especially funny about the Milwaukee router is that, like the Ridgid, it’s actually little more than an upgraded redesign of the $70 Ryobi used in the same test...that is actually several years old. Ryobi and Ridgid sharing parts and such is nothing new, but Milwaukee and Ryobi sharing such is a little more surprising. But if the Ryobi’s old adjustment mechanism still ends up superior to this brand new Dewalt’s, it’s hard to fault Milwaukee for using it as well.

The other thing is Makita DOES already have a 36V battery platform...separate and before X2...that the market simply never adopted. It even had an adaptor that allowed two LXT batteries to attach to the 36V tools in an essentially X2 style. In my mind the existence of that platform obviated the need for all this; they could have just slowly introduced more tools and batteries to that line. But maybe there’s more battery computer management they wanted to get in-built to the platform as a whole that would have made that direction more trouble than it’s worth.