Cordless tools, the next level

[b4autodark]

I have a Ridgid drill and impact 18v, like them. I have Makita drill, sawzall, portaband, and grinder 18v, like them, I have Oregon 40v chainsaw, leaf blower, pole saw, string trimmer, LOVE them. My daughter has Greenworks lawn mower and snow blower and likes them, I am impressed with the run time.

The only thing I don't like about battery tools is if they don't work they are seemingly throw aways. No one around here will look at them. It's a shame to have a $300 unit that needs a $10 switch and have to throw it.

 

[Superburban]

I wonder if there will ever be an industry standard established so that batteries of a given voltage become interchangeable across all brands?

I have seen places selling adapters to make one bat fir another. Don't recall if it was amazon, or ebay.

 

[ACHiPo]

I bought an 18V Ridgid drill when my 12V Dewalt died. I bought a second reconditioned one off Ebay along with two batteries, a reciprocating saw, multi-tool, and right-angle drill. I just picked up a leaf blower that I love--it is fantastic for getting leaves and crud out of the garage, although I feel a little like Carl from Caddie Shack when I clean the garage with it. All in all have been very impressed.

 

[Shootymacshootface]

I have an 18 volt Makita, and I like it well enough, but I hate how expensive the batteries are.

 

[Nogoingback]

However, that 250 mile range is just something I cannot get past, especially if going on a trip and possibly traveling to areas where charging stations are few and far between.

I have a funny story about that. (It was amusing to me anyway.) A friend of mine and I took a motorcycle camping trip to the Southwest a
few years ago. Our route one morning was northbound on Highway 89 from Flagstaff to Navajo Bridge and then up the hill to Jacob
Lake and west from there. That stretch of Highway 89 runs through the Navajo Reservation and is pure desert: almost no place to
stop once past the Grand Canyon turnoff. As we headed up the road we came up on a very slow moving car that turned out to be a
Tesla. The driver, and the expensive looking female next to him didn't look at all happy as we rode by. Why would a Tesla be going that slow?
Obviously because the battery was low and he was trying to save juice. We stopped at Navajo Bridge for gas and I asked the attendant
if there were tow trucks available because we knew of somebody that might need one. Only from Jacob Lake and Page she said.
That would have been an expensive tow out there, and no quick charge stations around I bet. As we headed west toward Jacob Lake,
we saw a flatbed tow truck headed down the hill. Next time out there, I bet that guy brought his SUV!

 

[graham-xrf]

Looking forward to riding a Zero soon, electric is definitely the future especially when MIT gets their fusion reactors online,

Validating the physics behind the new MIT-designed fusion experiment

MIT researchers have published seven papers outlining details of the physics behind the ambitious SPARC fusion research experiment being developed by MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

news.mit.edu

Hopefully yes! The 500MW Tokomak at ITER will only be getting first plasma in 2025, and up and running around 2035, and even then, it will still be a $22 billion experiment, with next phase DEMO. For something that started in 1985, I would say the pace is kind of slow!

ITER, and indeed the MIT one are Deuterium-Tritium fusors, which are not actually as clean as the publicity implies, because making the tritium requires a nuclear process starting with lithium in a nuclear reactor, and the process causes materials inside to become radioactive waste from neutron bombardment.

Unfortunately, the clean (aneutronic) Proton-Boron fusor hopes are a bit blunted. The Polywell idea was finally scuppered by the work at University of Sydney. P-B reaction produces no toxic by-products, but needs 100million degrees plasmas. I think, ultimately, we will have to get fusion working, but I think it will be DT.

 

[RJSakowski]

In 2006 I bought a Makita drill/driver and impact driver combo. They used an 18 volt NiMH battery. I have driven we;ll over 100 lbs of deck screws with them in the past fourteen years. I have replaced the batteries twice, the last set in 2014. I was able to swap out a dead cell in one of the previous sets and I am still using it. My last set of batteries was not Makita but an aftermarket and they have been going longer the the two previous sets of Makita batteries.

My experience with lithium ion batteries is with laptops. Battery life is poor to say the least. I suspect that it has to do with keeping them on charge during the working day. It is hard to get more than a year or two of service. The same goes for cell phones. My LG cell phone is on its third battery and the phone is only three years old. The GPS in my car uses a lithium ion battery and after a couple of years, it puffed up to the point where the case was bulging. The same with my old Motorola cell phone.

 

[DavidR8]

Earlier this summer in the midst of an uncharacteristically hot day here my trusty Ridgid cordless drill from 2004 started losing charge. Heck it had only renovated three houses, seemed like it was lying down on the job a bit soon in my view.
As it served me well for sixteen years I replaced it with another Ridgid model, more volts, more torque, less weight, tastes great kinda deal.

Well as soon as the weather cooled off it worked fine again. Go figure.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Firstgear]

I have a Ryobi chain saw. I have been using it for cutting small pieces....typically not anything more than 12 inches or so.

Last year I bought a new 2020 Sierra Denali HD2500 diesel.

This year I bought a new 2021 Yukon Denali.

We travel too much to make me comfortable with electric vehicles.

 

[NortonDommi]

NiCads were a poisonous, and blighted technology. They taught us the convenience of cordless tools, but I don't regret their passing. Maybe I should just dump the (quite nice) old hand drills. I can't even recycle the chucks!

There are videos on the YouTube about converting your Ni-Cad battery pack to Li-ion using off the self replacements which if bought on-line can be quite cheap. You can also buy adaptors that allow different brands to be used together.