Thread: makita power tools....... are they green? or blue?

I've always considered them blue.

They've always been blue but there is a cheap range available now which is green. Having said that, as one that used to mix colours for a living, the blue does have a touch of yellow in it which does give it a hint of green, but probably only to people who work with colours.

Mick

Blue vs green confusion is a common form of colour blindness, so it's not surprising to hear of a debate. I'd recommend a side-by-side comparison, which still might not settle it.

The possibility of colour-blind drivers also dictates the ordering of red/amber/green traffic signals.

Ambient lighting can also affect the interpretation. I have a Makita power planer, N1900B, that looks green under fluorescent lighting, and blue when illuminated with an LED torch.

Joe

Hard to say--you decide.

Originally Posted by Honorary Bloke

Hard to say--you decide.

Someones got to say it, "YOU BASTARD"

Originally Posted by minwaash

simple question to finish a debate between friends
are makita power tools green or blue in colour?

both

walking through my local Bunnies on Thursday night (easter project night for the kids) I noticed a Makita saw in SAGE GREEN

they are grue. that settles it.

and trafic lights are yellow not "amber".

the king has spoken

Hi Minwaash,

it's definitely blue. But within the Makita product range there seem to be several hues of it, mostly depending on the used materials. As with most tool brands, the colour liveries of Makita changed with time. Makita Electric Works started in 1915 in Nagoya, as an electrical goods repair shop, soon making its own electric motors and other parts, and those were painted black, brown and green. With the industrial region of Nagoya attracting large scale bombing, the works moved to Anjo in 1945 to escape such fate. In 1958 the brand intended to diversify into making its own brand power tools, with a handheld electric power planer as its first product. Series production started in 1959, later that year 1300 such planers were exported to Australia. The machine was made from cast metal alloy parts and was sprayed in metallic light olive green. Later on, the colours mostly seen on Makita tools for the Japanese market, were silver or grey, like for instance the first battery drill 6500D from 1965, with a silver sprayed metal housing and a lead-acid battery on a carrier shoulder strap. Makita set up production facilities abroad in Canada (1980), Brazil ('81), USA ('85), UK ('89) and China ('93) with many more to follow. Products on these foreign market also started in silver and grey, with addition of brighter colours around 1975. There were bright orange to indicate the better DIY-products and grey variants of these for the trade, changed around 1978 into the now familiar water or aqua blue (RAL 5021). There have also been red and cherry/maroon liveries and i once saw a light green budget Makita orbital sander and also some baby blue Makita budget tools. The battery vacs were cream. There were various Makita professional stationary woodworking machines in various shades of green and in green or grey tones of hammerite as well.

Whenever looking for and comparing between colours worldwide, it is useful to settle on a worldwide agreed colour scheme. For printing and publishing, the usual scheme is the PMS numerical matching system. Here in Holland the phone boxes are bright green (PMS375) and our trains are bright yellow (PMS116). So if i were the railroad or phone company and i wanted my folder and merchandise printing done cheap in China or perhaps the next year in Chile, all i had to do is specify the right colour numbers to be sure of the correct quality of printing results, regardless where in the world they were made. The same goes for the coating industry (houses, cars, metalworks, etc.), where the RAL system is the worldwide paint number standard.
Makita uses a lot of plastic materials, a peculiar Japanese choice was polycarbonate (PC) when the Europese industry tended to settle on industrial nylon (polyamide number six or PA6). PC is rather rigid, whereas PA6 is more pliable and susceptible to deformation under stress or pressure (like in the neighbourhood of screw joints). Therefore PA6 was fibre reinforced, mostly with glass fibre. With a fibre content of 30%, such nylon would read as PA6-GF30. This abbreviation can be seen stamped in for instance the blue nylon housing of e.g. the HR4000 hammer drill. In these times of environment and recycling, plastic types must be specified on tool housing parts to avoid mixing and spoiling entire melt batches. Apart from PC and PA there also are PS (polystyrene), PP (polypropylene) and ABS (acrylonitrilebutadienestyrene; many native tongue is dutch, i hope i spelled this somewhat plausible).
As plastics are died on RAL-specifications and are traded in bulk granulates as a feed for high pressure injection moulding systems, their origins and manufacturing processes can differ from country to country. The colour effect tends to get a bit brighter in lighter plastic molecules like polyprolylene and can turnout a trifle darker in the heavier compounds. Manufacturers can have their own visions on colour accuracy as well, Makitas manufactured in some years and countries can turn out in slightly diferent hues from those in other years and origins. The PP carrying cases around small machines often go in the direction of RAL 5018 turquoise blue, the ABS made battery torch is a bit more like RAL 5009 azure blue and the PC battery drills often have a RAL 5007 brilliant blue hue to them.
But in whatever way you look like it, in no RAL or PMS worldwide colour scheme is any Makita hue ever described as a shade of green; it's always a shade of blue.
Turquoise blue tints have been used by other brands as well, B&D introduced it some years after the introductions of its UK Spennymoor plant. In England, turquoise really was the trendy colour then, and it worked well for B&D's identity next to its already familiar orange. AEG also went for an aqua tint similar to RAL 5009 around 1982, abandoning its much darker Berlin/Prussian blue from 1956, when the Winnenden tool branch merged with Outillage Peugeot and Lurem SA into the EPTC before it was bought by Daimler (and after that by Atlas Copco and the Hong Kong form TI).

Greetings from the Netherlands

gerhard

Dear Gerhard,

You Rock...

Sorry for going off topic for a smidgen, but what exactly do you do for a "crust" over there?

You and Damien Hazo should start up some sort of Euro Tool Fanatics club. Check out some of his posts. He lives in Krautland. He drives a 928...

Cheers,
Batpig.

Ian's right. I have quite a few Makita "blue" tools. The new Bunnings ones are green. Maybe they are a new budget range.

the only thing that makes makita look really blue, is next to the "m series" range which are undoubtedly very green. looks like the end of the maktec range in ornage and now the DIY version is green - just bought the 180mm circular saw with heavy duty sole plate - only $129 - bargain

but walking passed a makita drill yesterday, I thought, bloody hell, is that blue or green? - so i've decided its a greeny blue as opposed to a bluey green. m series are well greener than a bosch! ;D ;D

Great post, Gerhard

According to our Makita rep, the green Mak stuff is similar specced to the Maktec stuff, and is exclusive to bunnings I think.

I thought it was yellow.....

Hi All,

I bought the Makita green circular saw recently and for $129 I reckon they're a bargain as well. The only negative is the plastic blade guard but nice solid base plate, supplied with 2 blades (Both 40T though & quality????) and pretty quiet when it's running.

I found some info about the range on the New Zealand Makita website. (no affiliation)

http://www.makita.co.nz/products/weekender.lsd


Cheers