paulengr

I keep splicing materials in a bag. I do a lot of large motors (motor shop) where it might take 6 rolls of tape or more for one motor. Along with silicone grease and liquid electrical tape. I tried to keep wire ties too but that’s just too much. They get their own bag. I tried organizing the splicing material but it seems to be best just to keep it all in a zipper bag with shears. That bag goes in the roll around base box which goes on all jobs outside of troubleshooting and controls. I break out the boxes of lugs and wire nuts because I don’t need to lug around 500 MCM lugs on a 25 HP motor but might need #14 lugs for thermal switches on a 2500 HP motor. The little Dewalt half width clear parts boxes fit the wire nuts. I need tape for marking and splicing on all of them but I don’t need tape on control jobs where I still need a knife and wire strippers so those stay in the main tool bag. I keep just one roll of 33+ or 88 there for troubleshooting. It seems like this stuff is scattered a bit but it is task specific. Another item is screws. The cheaper “small” Toughsystem tool box has 4 bins and an open center main compartment. There are two small bins in the top of the lid with a bunch of dividers. So I keep concrete anchors and drills in one bottom bin, another two dedicated to hole saws, step bits, and other special bits. The top bins have assortments of drywall, wood, and self tapping screws. The center compartment holds the drill, drill index, and extension handle. So everything “drill” related is in one box. I rarely use the side clips. I did at first but realized on the cart it’s not going anywhere. At best it’s somewhat anti-theft. Everything stays put normally as long as you engage the feet. I just stack the bins neatly on the bottom one and wheel it in. But this week was an exception. One day I was working in a vault. I got there early. So just closed the clips and lowered all the tools for the job into the vault with a rope by myself. Saved a lot of trips that way. Second I was driving at highway speeds and I had an empty tote loosely on top in the bed of the truck that I had emptied of parts. It was gusty that day. You can guess where this is going. It flew out just past an exit ramp where the detour to retrieve it was about 6 miles. I’ll think twice next time. As a +1 for Toughsystem a big black and yellow box flying out the back catches your eye in the mirrors easily and a second +1 not a scratch on it I could see! Ive dropped them, stood on them, had stuff drive on them, and now launched them and they keep holding up. Only problem I’ve had is when I put a new one in service and forgot to close the air valve on top, the parts inside were standing in an inch of water where a week of monsoon weather got into the box. But as a further +1 I live in coastal North Carolina. My tools in my unheated garage rust from constant high humidity and condensation. It’s a huge problem. But as long as I don’t close up the boxes with water inside or when it is raining, I’ve had almost no rust issues.

The OP asked about sourcing from Amazon not tool quality. In my mind you already got rid of the premium brand price going midrange. When it comes to sourcing if you can buy the same tool from another vendor with the same warranties and a better price go for it. But Amazon is not the seamless market it appears to be. In terms of quality this is the problem. HD is already leveraging their buying power and name recognition to take more margin for themselves and offering house brands at a cheaper price even over the crowded midrange market. PC is a midrange product of SBD, same as Craftsman. They also sell Dewalt and Black and Decker.’The midrange market falls between the low and high end. The issue is that there is going to be a design compromise. SBD is not going to cannibalize their Dewalt market. The design compromise might be reliability, offering a cheap price to occasional users, or it might be underpowered, few options, missing accessories, or otherwise compromised but still reliable. That’s what Porter Cable is, underpowered but reliable. You need experience and reviews to tell the difference. I mentioned Ridgid and Porter Cable because if someone is price conscious enough to look at the secondary market for a low to mid range brand, there’s no way they would consider a premium brand, whatever the logic is. The midrange market is tricky because no matter what tool or brand it is, there are compromises. SBD is not going to rebadge a Dewalt tool as Porter Cable because it cannibalizes Dewalt margins. The features, power, batteries, or reliability are going to be compromised, period. So we have to accept that compromises exist in the midrange market. The question is where the compromises can be made and still have an acceptable tool. A homeowner or other occasional use situation doesn’t need reliability or fast recharge times for instance. A light carpentry or assembler situation doesn’t need the speed of a dry waller, or the torque and energy of a mechanic drilling holes in plate. But where compromises are acceptable Ryobi might be a great fit. There are tools in the midrange market where the compromises are in the speed or torque departments but reliability is there. It can work for basically everybody but might be considered weak (Porter Cable impacts) or high vibration (Ridgid). Ryobi is both weak and low reliability. Depending on the work load it might last a long time and if it’s just shooting screws that’s fine. The midrange market would be much easier to figure out if they would all just put up signs telling us where the corners were cut. That isn’t going to happen so we don’t know directly, and that’s the midrange dilemma. The low end is easy...everything is probably compromised. It’s a one time use tool. All the packaging specs are lies but you wouldn’t run the tool at its limits anyways. You need it one time for something light duty. Like say I’m doing something with family and I took a plane trip to get there. When I’m done the tool gets given away or thrown away.

To question: for small holes with the typical spade bit concrete hammer drills you can just hold the drill by hand. You can do this up to 2” which is dine with water cooled mining drill bits if you can find it. You are basically beating the the material with a haa amber to break it then sweeping away the material and repeating. Above that you drill a small hole with a hammer drill and mount a rod to support the drill then use a core hole saw to drill as big a hole as you want. This is the traditional solid concrete approach. The support can be done other ways with a little creativity. The core drill is cutting with diamonds so fragility isn’t really a problem as long as you go slow enough.

Agreed on the container box. The Toughsystem has a clear box but the reviews aren’t good. Never seen one. The not clear top bolt bin box is as good as Packout but no clear lid a a nd more expensive but you get the little racks in the lid. I keep 5/8 to 3/8 nuts, washers, bolts in the bins and 1/4 and 5/16 in the little bins in one. #8 to 500 MCM lugs in another. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I can’t find anyone claiming to be an authorized retailer for new except Home Depot. Ryobi and Husky are house or “store” brands for HD just like Kobalt for Lowe’s. So effectively what you are looking at is one of three things. Either someone is buying tools at HD at retail and reselling, buying say old stock or clearance and reselling, or its black market (stolen), or its grey market which typically means they bought something either rejected at the factory and someone went “dumpster diving” or the factory unloaded it cheap locally, or outright stolen off the production line, or if you’re lucky maybe it’s a sales demo. Either way when you take it to a repair center you can’t show the original receipt for any of these, and the repair center can’t do warranties on grey market goods, and black market (stolen) can get them into legal trouble which is why they insist on receipts and check serial numbers with HD to be sure before they touch it. At the very least you won’t get warrantied and at worst you’ll get your tool confiscated and if you have a receipt only have to answer questions and deal with a police report. I did check and Tyler tools advertises they offer ONLY factory reconditioned tools and they are authorized for this. That’s the only name other than HD that popped up. Careful searching their web site shows they are either another name for or have some kind of affiliation with CPO Tools which does a lot of reconditioned tool business and is a reputable company. They sell on eBay and direct so Amazon presence would not surprise me. If you click on the button to list the seller Amazon tells you where it came from. If it looks fishy, it is. It is very easy to game Amazon’s retailer system. The first hint is less than 50 or so recs, often only 1 or 2. Second hint is when it’s a very strange “call me” description attempting to get you to buy outside the Amazon channel. Third hint is an unbelievably low price, such as way below the CPO price. CPO is like Walmart...not the cheapest but usually near the bottom of reputable vendors so if it’s more than 10-20% under that, it’s probably scam. Personally I’ve bought reconditioned stuff from CPO, Ohio Power Tools, Acme, even Dell before. Never had an issue except on cell phones off Amazon (2 out of 3 were OK). I wouldn’t bother with Ryobi unless it’s a one time only tool (one job, one time, don’t care if it fails). I use my tools every day, break sockets occasionally, break chucks, wear tools out, break them getting dropped 20 feet up, lose them in tanks of raw sewage or overboard on water, you get the idea. I buy quality to a point because I expect to use, and lose, my tools. Tool loss/breakage/wear is a cost of doing business. Ryobi is intended for homeowners and guys too cheap for their own good. They have some very cool gadget lover tools but no matter how much I try to tell myself how cool they are, it’s just obvious it’s lipstick on a pig. I’d steer you to look at Ridgid or HPT/Metabo and look at Acme Tools and CPO Outlets online where you can get the big dollar brand on clearance or reconditioned. The price will be the same, no chance of grey market, and it will hold up.

Don’t forget carbon taxes! Aussie politicians will fall for just about any socialist scam.

All mine are all metal latches. The biggest problem is if it’s unlatched and something falls on the latch which rips it off. As long as it’s closed stuff slides off. The little screw sometimes strips out. That makes it hard to fix. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And all pale compared to mid range or better corded. My M18 is awesome in the field and tight spaces but if I have to say remove paint/scale on a large area corded wins every time. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Interesting. The Milwaukee rocket is 3000 lumens depending on generation/model and eats a 5 Ah at full power in 2 hours. Sounds identical. At the lowest setting I can go 8+ hours. Or use the smaller task light at 1500 lumens for 4 hours at full output. Looks like then doing some math 1500/4/5 is about 75 lumens per Ah Milwaukee and 3000/4/9 = 80 lumens/Ah about the same. The issue I’m finding with the tower lights is they do good on general lighting but not so great focus for task lighting. I do a lot of switchgear electrical so guess what...I work in the dark a lot because the first thing I do is kill power. Was hoping the tower lights gave me great task lighting but I need both. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have a Packout (bought with a tool) but I don’t use it. It’s so bulky and doesn’t hold much. All my stuff is in Toughsystem boxes. I looked at T-Stak which is cheaper but it just looks chintzy. At the time when I was buying a lot Packout wasn’t very available, I like their bolt bin box but nothing else in the line. My bigger bolt bin is a Toughsystem as are my bigger lugs. All my small lugs, wire nuts, and self tapping screws are in the half width clear Dewalt stacking boxes that don’t have a name and don’t stack with anything except themselves. They fit inside the Toughsystem rolling box nicely. The big thing for me is organization and capacity. Second is I drive a truck so weather is a concern, I have my major tools and parts bins kitted out, I can set the rolling bin with my “general construction” tools in it down. Then stack whatever specialty tools and boxes on top. Then stack an open tote on top and load it with parts then throw my tool bag on top. Clip a work light on the handle and then I can wheel everything right to the job site in one load. If it’s a big fabrication job might take two trips max. This is way better than a half dozen trips to the truck. The boxes also double as a bench seat, stool, or table. And I lose a lot less tools now I can easily put them all back, and find a tool on the truck in seconds instead of hunting for 15 minutes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That’s funny. My M18 Fuel drill has speed control. It’s torquey but controllable. Brushless DC itself is easily controllable for either torque or speed from a technical point of view. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

#1 mistake: buying TiN. This is a coating that can slightly improve cutting speeds on good quality bits until it wears off. But it will also make a cheap junk bit a pretty gold color. That is what you purchased. Get on Amazon. Search for jobber length drill index. This will get you into some high quality American made high speed steel bits: they will not be pretty gold. An index up to 1/2” will set you back $100. Which is about the same price as buying pretty junk Dewalt sets at Lowe’s. Next step is to Google drill speeds. Chances are your drill meant for wood where there is almost no upper limit on speed is way too fast. Slow down to the correct speed and let the bit take metal at its intended speed. If you get it right it can break your wrist with an 18 V drill on larger bits. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think it’s dead on arrival. Blades in grinders are high wear. It’s normal to go through at least a couple blades per job. I’ve tried the diamond blades and they were disappointing. Quick change and low cost rule. I will pay for performance so I don’t buy the cheapest wheels. Maybe if they came up with something like a Morse taper or SDS for welders but this is backwards. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I’m confused. Shouldn’t Milwaukee tools be made in, well, you know...? Kind of like how most Aoex Tool Group stuff is made in the Carolinas because uh Apex is in North Carolina. Otherwise it would be Beijing Tool, right? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The wet/dry vac cannot get rained on (yeah, oxymoron). Milwaukee keyless chucks fail a lot but getting the same brand as used on Dewalt fixes the issue. Other than that normal tool abuse is the biggest way to have one fail. At around $100 a piece for the most popular tools and close to $50 for the repair shop if there is one nearby plus time dealing with it, is repair a viable option. I can understand with say a $2500 tool but not the typical power hand tools. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Depends on what the extra protection is for. Safety toes are in case you drop something big on your foot, nothing more. But they protect the ties, not metatarsals. Metatarsal boots extend this all the way back to your ankle albeit not all that comfortably until recently. Today thanks to a Brit some of them come with D3O which is this awesome foam that makes it just a fat tongue in the boot. Very popular with welders not just for the protection but if a piece of molten slag lands on the boot it just rolls off instead of burning through. As far as the various types, carbon fiber is the lightest, composite light and not thermally conductive (think winter), and steel the heaviest with prices following the obvious trend. Another thing to consider is shanks. The shank is a short plate in the sole. Most boots have a short one because it helps keep the shoe from rolling as you walk. Lineman and ditch digger (shovel) boots have 3/4 or full shank. This is a little less comfortable because the boot is much stiffer and doesn’t bend at the toes and arch. The advantage is that you can stand on a ladder rung or throw your full weight onto a shovel without bruising your feet. So if you will be digging footers a longer shank is a huge plus. Finally there are puncture resistant inserts and boots. I strongly recommend the latter. The inserts take up about a half size so you can’t reuse existing boots and they are basically a piece of steel with some foam on top that feels like standing on thin foam covering a steel plate (ow!) As a side note there is “EH” that is a thin membrane that is supposed to protect from shock. It is not tested and does NOT work. Please don’t ask how I know about the latter. Let’s just say I and others have tested it. As far as what you need, the most common residential construction accident next to getting stuff in your eyes has to be nails through the foot. Rarely getting things dropped on your foot. As a mostly industrial maintenance person after about 30 years of experience I’d say I’ve put nails through my foot 4 or 5 times, dropped something on my foot where the steel toe worked maybe 2-3 times, and hit my metatarsals at least twice. Unless you religiously pound out the nails every time and pick every nail and screw up every time it will happen eventually. The best thing about steel toes is you can kick the blank out of something when you need to. Or balance something heavy on your foot comfortably. Like when a horse plays “lean” with you or steps on your foot to show dominance. In bare feet (been there done that) it is very painful and bruises for a week. In steel toes you can laugh at the horse attempting it as their foot rolls off yours! All that being said what I’m trying to say is for a kitchen remodel probably not safety toes. If anything puncture resistant soles would be my first thought if I did it professionally. Regardless you need to try them on in a store. They all fit very differently from a standard shoe/boot. Safety toes in particular have a tendency to cut into the sides or top of your foot so you often need a larger toe box or the right width or go up a size from what you are used to. Also consider riggers. So comfortable. There is a reason they’re popular. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ok so I already have the M18 grinder. I have a nice corded Dewalt for bigger jobs. Also have the M18’saber saw. And a 20 year old Hitachi brand corded Sawzall which does OK for demo work. Also HF electric shears. And Greenlee knockout punches and the Gator Pro punch adapter that I’ve modified to run the stainless punches too (sweet!)So in electrical I often do a lot of panel cutouts. Right now I mark and either drill corners and finish with the saber saw where it fits or the grinder otherwise with a cutoff blade, or else start with the grinder and use the saber saw where I can. I’ve been thinking about swapping the corded sawzall for cordless but it does an awful job for things other than demo work. Been thinking about a cordless cold saw instead. Any thoughts from those who have one compared to the other tools I already have? I’m just about convinced that most of the time the grinder is best at throwing sparks and grinding but for clean cuts and efficient metal removal it’s not the best but the saber saw is hard to get in many spots. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It is virtually impossible to have a monopoly in the US without government intervention. As soon as one gets close another knocks them down. As #2 you simply target the best customers not the whole market. The biggest has to eat the worst customers to stay the biggest. So Walmart will fall eventually just as Sears and K-Mart have. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not sure about WiFi which is a totally different standard but wireless garage doors were standardized which is why for instance new vehicles come with built in buttons. We’ve had to replace the buttons on ours. You just hit the programming button on the door controller from a step ladder then the remote. On some you can do it all from the remote. Kind of like Bluetooth pairing. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Uhh attach a piece of wood to it with say hose clamps but no matter what you do the tool is just plain going to be severely out of balance. If you want an air angle grinder buy one. They are so cheap just the materials to mod a straight grinder blows up your budget. Can’t you by a cheap Campbell off Amazon or Walmart for $25? It will be far better. I parked the compressor permanently off the truck two years ago. I think the last job we used one was for impacts on a job with 1-5/8” bolts 3 years ago back when 150-200 ft-lbs was it for cordless while air impacts were at 600 ft-lbs. Now with Milwaukee’s cordless at 1400 ft-lbs the air tools are retired on our crew. There are still lots of uses but angle grinding not so much. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don’t think any drill works that way except I think I’ve seen one with what amounts to a standard one with a torque sensor added to it. None of the major brands have torque control as a setting. Sure you can often adjust it but it’s not a set value. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't see a capacitor in your photos. The capacitor does not have to be on the motor itself. That's more of a pump/appliance thing. There are a couple components to look for. First in almost all cases the motor has three wires and two stator coils, a run coil and a start coil if it's a nonreversing motor. The coils share one of the three wires. Locate the wires and use an ohm meter on them. You should get 3 different readings. Direction doesn't matter. So start with the highest reading. This means the third wire is the shared one. This reading should be pretty close to the sum of the other two. The middle reading should be roughly twice the smallest reading. If you read open or shorted (less than 1 ohm) the motor is fried and needs replacement. Moving on next you can have 0, 1, or 2 capacitors depending on the design. 120/240 V is single phase so without another phase the motor is not self starting. So the motor might be shaded pole and only have two wires but those are really inefficient so not on a planer. Second is it might have permanent caps but they might be hidden inside. With both caps the first one is a run capacitor. This increases the voltage and power to the motor. Not a necessity but most have one. It will be in parallel with the run leads (smallest resistance). Second is a starting capacitor that is in parallel with the start winding (middle resistance). These are bigger and contain a can filled with a roll of paper and aluminum foil soaked in an electrolyte such as glycol. It has a very distinct odor. The can is crimped shut. When the electrolyte dries out (roughly 10 years) or if the motor doesn't start after about 30 seconds or so (run caps are huge so they are thermally limited to reduce size) the capacitor overheats, the electrolyte boils, and the steam blows up the capacitor. This is what happens 95% of the time. There are two ways motor running is detected. Method one more common on cheap motors uses an inertia switch which is what it sounds like. A spring loaded switch hugs the motor shaft. Once it starts spinning a weight on the shaft pushes a lever to open the switch. These either get fouled or wear out pretty easy. Or thers is a voltage sensor that opens once the motor turns and the voltage across the start coil drops. This is called a potential relay. Much more reliable but they still go bad. If either type is present and they fail the start cap blows out too. Except the inertial switch this can all be inside or outside the motor housing. If it's inside you'll have to pull the end caps off. If you do the bearings are pressed in so often this destroys the bearings. In the motor shop we just replace them anyways. Plus if you can't tell this is all leading towards the fact that if it's something simple and obvious to test and replace, do that. But otherwise the cost and time of troubleshooting and sourcing parts often exceeds the cost of the planer itself or retrofitting another motor. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

1. A patent is a license to sue. It costs a couple million per suit. Are you prepared for this? This is irrespective of NDAs etc. 2. How iron clad is your patent? Think of alternative implementations or design improvements. In a former job I was paid to technologically bust patents. It’s very easy with 99% of them. With the 1% like “swipe to unlock” it’s not so easy. 2. Have you done any market research? On the high end you will be constrained by $100 for name brand battery impacts never mind air impacts and you are increasing both manufacturing costs and hopefully margins. If the price point isn’t high enough the idea is worthless from a business point of view. 3. Realistically the next step would be to go to a small tool manufacturer and try to sell royalties. You’re looking at a small piece of already small margins on a specialty and thus small volume market. The goal is of course to eventually sell the patent outright or royalties to SBD. That means look at your marketing. Believe it or not, ideas are actually super cheap. Only a tiny few are marketable. Even fewer still make a lot of money, 99.99% of the time since you have to publish everything in a patent using trade secrets gets you to the market far faster, costs zero to defend, and keeps design details out of the public eye. At a bare minimum I’d say 90% of patents are “fakes”...they patent a very similar but related idea that encompasses the one they want to protect but they publish a bogus embodiment that is not a functioning design. Patents don’t have to be for real devices, just meet the rules. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Maybe... not sure where they get them but for decades many large circuit breakers (1000+ A ANSI style draw outs in cast frames) use Ryobi drill motors to charge up the spring mechanism, But be aware of what happens when you do what you describe and this goes for the speed adjustments on the drills. Most of the older ones used a brushed “universal” motor which is a DC motor. Adjusting the DC voltage adjusts the speed but the magnetic field comes from permanent magnets so torque is fixed. The AC is usually left alone. A lamp dimmer uses a device called a TRIAC or two SCRs. When the AC wave goes through 0 A and this is key it turns off. The circuit detects the Voltage (not current) zero and then based on a timer fires a pulse that turns the TRIAC on. By manipulating the timing you get a from 0 to 100% of a chopped wave. On a resistive load like an incandescent or halogen load you get light dimming down to about 25% then rattling filaments from 25% to 0%. A motor, particularly a DC motor though is highly inductive. The dimmer will fire to turn it on but because inductive current severely lags voltage it does not turn off like you expect and the effect is also load dependent! Suggest you look at KB Electronics or Automation Direct. A small cheap real DC or AC motor controller will run about the same price as the lamp dimmer. Plus you can use very cheap small AC or DC motors without having to Frankenstein something with a drill and the cost won’t be much. Or you can look at Vex or the FiRST Robotics retailers that sell high performance servo controllers for under $100 and motors for half that. Sometimes scrounging just costs you money and time in the long run when you can buy the real stuff so cheaply. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sounds like cell reversal. No recovery from that. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk