Thread: 18v power tools

After running dewalt for 15 years now and been out off the trade a little while i need to buy a new set.
We have full kit of dewalt at work and also just gone to a milwaukee grease gun and socket impact driver on the digger

All am wanting for home is a drill, 1/4 impact driver and skill saw for now. Still do the odd building project.
Dewalt seems to have lost the plot with there batteries

I have no first hand experience with Milwaukee but will be out of these to brands
Dewalt 3yr warranty
Milwaukee 5yr warranty

All the tradies I know have shifted over to Milwaukee FWIW

Milwaukee are just another Chinese tool, with a good Marketing Company, they own Ryobi and AEG
Makita, Hikoki and Bosch, would be my choice, all my battery tools are Makita.
Big thing is to stick with the brand that offers what you want, so you can buy skins for you batteries, don’t mix, batteries are expensive

Originally Posted by bigbear

After running dewalt for 15 years now and been out off the trade a little while i need to buy a new set.
We have full kit of dewalt at work and also just gone to a milwaukee grease gun and socket impact driver on the digger

All am wanting for home is a drill, 1/4 impact driver and skill saw for now. Still do the odd building project.
Dewalt seems to have lost the plot with there batteries

I have no first hand experience with Milwaukee but will be out of these to brands
Dewalt 3yr warranty
Milwaukee 5yr warranty

I think you should add a 125mm angle grinder to that list of essentials. lots of uses other than just grinding steel. Flapper discs and wire wheels and parting off discs make them a very flexible bit of kit. Things I use mine for that are not grinding steel: cleaning heavily goo'ed up paint brushes, reshaping cows' hooves, sharpening the knobbies on my dirt bike, making manuka outdoor furniture fit right. Also good for cleaning up really rusted pins, bolts etc.

Its a good idea to do some research on yt or similar regarding the tools you are looking to purchase. Most manufacturers make 3 or 4 tools (say a drill) very similar, but with differences that may be quite important to your intended useage.

Milwaukee were good in the start but seem to have gone down the cheap route except for batteries they are very expensive. Makita are committed to the 18v range for about another 5 years according to their rep then slowly transitioning to 40v. I personally went Makita as the tools weigh less, although just left the trade and cordless is less of a need now.

I watch Jackson Brothers Faming on Youtube. (The guys with the two D11s)
Jacksons appear to be changing from Dewault to Milwaukee, or maybe the other way round. At any rate they sourced a neat adapter to use either their Milwaukee batteries on a Dewault, or the other way round. So if in the past you have committed to one brand and wish to change there is a solution.

My Makita 13mm 18v brushless drill is only 5 years old and on 3rd or 4th chuck, drills oval holes. Not had hard use either
My 23 year old panasonic drill had had a hiding and I only replaced it with a Makita because battery was buggered and replacments not available and the rest of they guys I work with run Makitas so we can "borrow" batteries if needed. Would not buy another

no complaints with Milwaukee gear, we thrash the shit out of their socket impact drivers and they handle no probs

You need to go up a model to the alloy gearbox, I’ve thrashed my DDF458 this year, with no problems

Originally Posted by mikee

My Makita 13mm 18v brushless drill is only 5 years old and on 3rd or 4th chuck, drills oval holes. Not had hard use either
My 23 year old panasonic drill had had a hiding and I only replaced it with a Makita because battery was buggered and replacments not available and the rest of they guys I work with run Makitas so we can "borrow" batteries if needed. Would not buy another

No sure about the latest Makitas. They don't always rate that well in comparison reviews. And I have older Makita (although corded) disk grinders and they have been bullet proof. I sense that battery Makitas may be underpowered compared to their equivalent competitors.

Having said that I still have and use a wee Makita drill bought in the mid 80s. At that stage that drill was the industry standard, mainly as not much else around. It is a very flat compact drill which I have found good for drilling holes near edges in the likes of cupboards. The OEM battery is still hanging in there.

My other drill, which is a variable speed hammer Ryobi industrial line (yeah, don't laugh) is around 23 years old. It is a reasonably powerful drill but not too heavy and great if up a ladder which cannot be the case with some of the behemoths now available on the market.
I have had the battery repacked once by Simpower which also increased the capacity and extended the life of the drill.

Unfortunately, the drill is now emitting bad smells and I have started to look for a replacement which will include a brand change. May go cheap as my usage now retired is low.

^^ If you "let the smoke out" of things electrical they are usually buggered I find . . .

I have a stack of DeWalt and if buying again would get Makita or possibly Milwaukee. Some guys I know also run Hikoki
The Dewalt rattle gun fucked itself fairly quickly and I am lucky if I get 2 years out of the batteries which apparently can't be repacked so there goes $285 a pop. For the money I spent on it I am not impressed

Agreed on the old Panasonic drills, also I had an old Bosch drill that lasted ages

I run bosch but its expensive ,6yr warranty but just got onto ( saleslink )on tme for makita knock offs $105 for 1/2 impact 550 nm with 2 batteries very impressed also gen bats fit they have grinder skins for $59 very happy . I pick up adapters that let me run bosch bats on makita for 20 on tme . DONT buy aeg crap but ozito is pretty good for the money 3x 4ah batts for 125 just need to find a ozito to bosch adapter they do the other way for cheap skins which is handy aswell . I hear milwalkie are shits to deal with for warranty .

Me mate in the trade reckons the best thing that happened to his dewalt set was getting it flogged out of the back of his truck (middle of the day in a shopping center car park on camera too the cheeky fu*ks - never saw it again though). He went to Makita - but is a little ho-hum about it.

I've always had Hitachi which became hitachi-koki and now Hikoki. It's definitely not the cheapest, but if I have to replace the entire lot I'll be going for the same brand. I've still got the cartridge type batteries which I've repacked myself - they go but aren't brilliant. Getting to the point of needing to make a move on it and flogging off what I've got, but the skins themselves are still going really well.

FENZ uses Milwaulkee gear - they have some really useful tool skins and the designs are good. In feel though, the tools are much lighter in the hand than the Hikoki gear and it doesn't reaslly fill me with confidence. Plastic reinforced chassis vs metal reinforced chassis is one of the big reasons for the difference in weight tool for tool I think, and gearbox and switchgear.

Bosch Professional has had the shortest life of anything I have used.