Thread: Assistance with cordless drill

In my experience, the "lack of regular use" (full charge/full discharge cycle) will kill a battery before over use. If I were you, I would buy a dedicated driver/drill but with a cord on it. Yes there are limitations with mobility, but, with a cord you never run out of batteries. It will probably be cheaper initially too which will give you enough money over to buy some long leads

I'd steer clear of the 18v Makita Ni-Cad. It's quite old now and those orange Makita batteries were never much chop. I use to have a 9.6v and 12v makita drills and it felt like I was throwing new batteries at it every 12 months. The Batteries in the ones sold at Bunnings have a grey top, these are Chinese cells and are around 1.3A/hr.

If you can stretch your budget to $330, go for this
http://www.powertoolspecialists.com.au/loadShopSingleProduct.do?id=1447&productSource=loadShopProductsPage.do

These are only 1.5A/hr batteries, but will outlast the NiCad's and will be more than adequate for your use.

Having said that the Ryobi 18v system seems to be ok. A few guys I work with use it and seem happy with it as its dirt cheap to replace batteries and has a large range of bare tools. My father inlaw bought the drill kit a year ago and has since added things like the impact driver, circular saw and reciprocating saw. He uses it for various things around his 20 acre property without any dramas.....yet!

I've got the Makita 6349D which is 18V 2.0Ah Ni-Cad battery and have had it for about 6 yrs with irregular use, like what you're proposing and it holds a charge well for extended periods of time.

Check out the Ah rating for the batteries, the higher that is the more charge the battery will hold

I was considering a corded drill however bunnings dont seem to have much of a range of corded drills with torque. Since my main use will be driving screws, I dont really want an impact drill because the ones that ive seen dont have torque adjustment which will lead to a lot of damaged screw heads.

In both your posts you have said bunnings dont have much range so maybe you need to look elsewhere. bunnings arent the best for tools and the idoits there wouldnt know a drill from a jackhammer.. im sure there are dedicated tool stores nearby. try those . their prices will be as good if not better than bunnings and the range will be huge.

Originally Posted by gt88

My main needs are power, decent battery life and drill that will last. Ill mainly be using it for driving screws.

If you mainly going to be driving screws have you thought about a impact driver? I believe you can drilling bits in these to as long as they have the correct shank and are designed specifically for driving screws?

If your mainly looking at Bunnings have a look at the Bosch, AEG and Makita ones.

Alex

GT88

I have a Makita bhp441 which is a real power house for most jobs. Son has a drill which would serve you well, its a Hitachi 14.4v DV14DCL it has two 1.5 a Lithium ion batteries and it is nice and light and I believe these sell for around $300. Well worth a look. I also have one of the older Makita's which is 12v and has the red battery, you can pick these up for about $150 now. It is quite old now and has been a great item and worked hard for a lot of years, but not even close to the new lithium ion types.

Regards Mike

PS welcome to the forums

It really depends on what you want to spend, have you considered the porter cable 18v lithium cordless, they go for around $275 mark & come with a three year warranty...really good value for money

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I have used all of the popular ones and I bought an AEG plenty of power, not bad battery life, more comfortable to use than the hitachi and makitas and 3 year warranty standard.

cost me $389 from memory but my mate who bought a hitachi at the same time agrees it is a far better drill, and when I use his hitachi for any period of time I end up with a blister in the webbing between my thumb and forefinger. The aeg will also drive a screw harder than the hitachi. you can get them with 1.5 AH batteries but you can also get the 3.0 AH batteries which are plug and play, however they charge that quickly you will never flatten one before the other is charged.

I have also used quite a few dewalts and although they are a bit more bulky they are strong and reliable unlike the experiences I have had with their black and decker cousins.

my picks would be in order

AEG/milwaukee
Dewalt
Makita and equal third probably panasonic ( would rate them higher but they are harder to get and thus backup although probably very good is a worry. they did have the best battery life of all of them a few years back.)

and I was always a hitachi fan

*EDIT* go at least 18 volt these are built as true TRADE quality items the 14.4 volt ones are aimed at the guy who uses one for 10 minutes a week at home.

forgot to say do not skimp on what you pay, I did this for a lot of years and regretted it, pay a bit more up front and save in the long run. I went through a lot of the mid range ($120 to $240 dollar) drills and was forever wishing I had gotten the bit better one. I now have the bit better one and would not go back.

Personally I would not buy a hammer drill in cordless as brick dust is unforgiving and you can buy a good corded hammer drill fairly cheaply which then leaves the cordless handy for what it was meant for, driving screws etc. and then if you have to drive a BIG screw into hard wood you have the power of a corded drill to do it as there are just some things a cordless cannot do.

model I got was bs 18-xlr AEG 2 x 1.5 AH li-ion batteries. li-ion batteries are supposed to be better for the "irregular" user as they do not have a memory like the ni cads and nimh's.

if your buying the aeg cordless mak sure it has the orange battery clips, the red ones had a batch problem & most of them were exchanged for the orange but there were a few still in circulation

GT88

As Alex said, look at an impact driver. Since you want it to mainly drive screws this is what an impact driver is really good at. I have 2, a Ryobi one and a DeWalt one.

You can buy drill bits that have a hex shaft that can be used at a pinch in an impact driver but you are probably better served with a corded drill and a cordless impact driver.

Once you have used an impact driver you'll never uses a cordless drill to drive screew again. They are absolutely awesome.

I just bought the AEG 18v drill driver from Bunnings, only $275. Plenty of torque, only 1/2 hour to charge each battery. That'll do me. As Travis said very comfortable to use and not too heavy

[QUOTE=Travis Edwards;1122592]I have used all of the popular ones and I bought an AEG plenty of power, not bad battery life, more comfortable to use than the hitachi and makitas and 3 year warranty standard.

cost me $389 from memory but my mate who bought a hitachi at the same time agrees it is a far better drill, and when I use his hitachi for any period of time I end up with a blister in the webbing between my thumb and forefinger. The aeg will also drive a screw harder than the hitachi. you can get them with 1.5 AH batteries but you can also get the 3.0 AH batteries which are plug and play, however they charge that quickly you will never flatten one before the other is charged.