cordless drill questions

I'm thinking of getting a cordless drill, mostly for use on the boat where I don't always have access to AC. My thought was to get a 12 volt model and make some sort of adapter so I could run it from the boat's storage batteries. My experience with cordless power tools so far has been that the batteries are the part that fails.

Since it will only see occasionaly use and I expect it's batteries to be useless anyway, I'm looking towards the cheapy models. There are a couple (on special at Canadian Tire for you canuks) a 12 and a 14.4 volt model that appear to be the same, and I found myself wondering if in fact they might be identical except for the battery packs. The only difference in the specs is the 12 says 0-550rpm, the 14.4 says 0-600.

Has any body run a nominal 14.4 tool with 12 volts and did it perform OK or did it overheat, shorten the life of the motor, etc?

Does anybody have the inside dope on these kinds of tools and know whether these might actually be identical except for the battery?

Has anybody made an adapter to run a cordless tool from a 12 volt storage battery? How did you approach this? I have a couple of ideas but I always welcome more...

TIA

Mickey

Reply to
Mickey Feldman
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The tools don't handle correctly without a battery pack installed. The battery pack is heavy, and if you remove it, for instance, you can't put down a drill on its base -- it will just fall over. If I were you I might try the Harbor Freight el cheapos. Those tools are cheap enough so you can throw them away without much pain if something isn't right. I bought a bunch of DeWalt 18V cordless stuff a few years back and every one of them has worked flawlessly so far. I only wish they made a cordless hedge trimmer.

Grant Erw> I'm thinking of getting a cordless drill, mostly for use on the boat

Reply to
Grant Erwin

Get yourself a yard sale drill for five bucks or less and solder on a length of lamp cord with a couple of battery clips or a lighter plug and your in business Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Reply to
Gerald Miller

Why not use a 12 to 120 volt dc to ac converter for the charger ? Martin

Reply to
Martin H. Eastburn

I'm not sure about Canadian Tire but I sell power tools on Saturdays and we sell some very expensive cordless drills that are of different voltages that use the same housings. The motors are slightly different to accommodate the different voltages. The tools' torque ratings are different while the RPM stays consistent.

YMMV.

Regards,

Robin

Reply to
Robin S.

Interesting Blue Laws in Canuckistan.

Gunner

"This device is provided without warranty of any kind as to reliability, accuracy, existence or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose and Bioalchemic Products specifically does not warrant, guarantee, imply or make any representations as to its merchantability for any particular purpose and furthermore shall have no liability for or responsibility to you or any other person, entity or deity with respect to any loss or damage whatsoever caused by this device or object or by any attempts to destroy it by hammering it against a wall or dropping it into a deep well or any other means whatsoever and moreover asserts that you indicate your acceptance of this agreement or any other agreement that may he substituted at any time by coming within five miles of the product or observing it through large telescopes or by any other means because you are such an easily cowed moron who will happily accept arrogant and unilateral conditions on a piece of highly priced garbage that you would not dream of accepting on a bag of dog biscuits and is used solely at your own risk.'

Reply to
Gunner

Take the battery pack apart, run wires to the terminal posts inside, and run a cord out the back. you have now made an adapter that will run the tool and it will still accept the battery packs as well.

Reply to
Peter DiVergilio

Reply to
Thomas Kendrick

I build dies Sunday through Friday and sells tools on Saturday (mostly as a distraction).

Good one anyway, Gunner....

Regards,

Robin

Reply to
Robin S.

This from someone who runs (ugh!) Windoze!

Ted

Reply to
Ted Edwards

When the last of my 7.2 volt batteries died, I started running my 7.2V Makita tools on my Makita 9V batteries. No problems after about five years.

As do all of these overpriced NiCd packs, My six year old Makita 9V batteries are on their last legs. I picked up a 12V drill complete with charger and _two_ batteries at XSCargo in Kelowna for $25. This, and a

12 to 120V inverter to run the charger would do you well.

I might rebuild the Makita packs myself with NiMH cells but I sure as Hell won't pay Makita's price for battery packs.

Ted

Reply to
Ted Edwards

Add a fuse too. Somewhere about 15-20A should be about right.

Reply to
Ian Stirling

Just get a cordless drill with a 12 volt charger, then you can use it anywhere.

I find that my cordless drill is the tool that I use most often, so I don't suggest a cheap one. Two batteries are nice.

Richard

Mickey Feldman wrote:

Reply to
Richard Ferguson

My thoughts exactly. The 18v cordless I've got has a keyless chuck which works well for 1/4" hex stuff like screwdriver bits but really sucks for round-shank drills. My dad had a Makita with a keyed chuck that would hold round bits securely, but didn't have enough guts to drill reasonable sized holes. If you're doing a lot of work with driving fasteners, a cordless may do you, but the higher the voltage, the better the torque, usually. If all you've got is 12v. available, you're probably going to want to get an inverter anyway and then you can charge up the higher voltage battery packs, or just bypass the whole thing and use a regular corded drill, if you want to make holes.

The sweet spot for inverter sizes keeps going up, you can get an 800 watt inverter now for about $40-50 depending on which Sunday paper ad you look at and which car parts chain it's for. A single spare battery pack for a drill will cost you close to what one of the inverters costs, you WILL want more than one pack if you go that route. Mine will run my 4x6 bandsaw, or the small HF drill press, or the 7x minilathe as well as the hand drill. Can't quite cope with starting current on the Skilsaw, though. Might get a 1200 watt inverter in a couple of months when the prices drop again. I use a deep cycle 12v. battery I found in a parking lot to run it.

Stan

Reply to
Stan Schaefer

What's that Lassie? You say that Mickey Feldman fell down the old rec.crafts.metalworking mine and will die if we don't mount a rescue by Wed, 21 Jul 2004 04:18:31 GMT:

yes. I took a dead battery pack and gutted it. I soldered heavy wires to the contacts, added a strain relief, and used a soldering iron to 'weld' the pack back together. Then just a couple of big alligator clips and your in business. Mind the polarity.

I did similar with another drill charger when it went belly up.

I cut the charger down to just the socket that takes the battery pack, and got rid of all but the contact part of the circuit board. With a lot of silicone caulk, and a cigarette socket, I now have 12v power on the go.

Dan H.

Reply to
dan

My XP Pro machine has had an uptime of 11 months so far. My Mandrake

9.1 box has gone down twice in that time.

Shrug

Gunner

"This device is provided without warranty of any kind as to reliability, accuracy, existence or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose and Bioalchemic Products specifically does not warrant, guarantee, imply or make any representations as to its merchantability for any particular purpose and furthermore shall have no liability for or responsibility to you or any other person, entity or deity with respect to any loss or damage whatsoever caused by this device or object or by any attempts to destroy it by hammering it against a wall or dropping it into a deep well or any other means whatsoever and moreover asserts that you indicate your acceptance of this agreement or any other agreement that may he substituted at any time by coming within five miles of the product or observing it through large telescopes or by any other means because you are such an easily cowed moron who will happily accept arrogant and unilateral conditions on a piece of highly priced garbage that you would not dream of accepting on a bag of dog biscuits and is used solely at your own risk.'

Reply to
Gunner

How much do they want locally? I sell Makita 7.2V bats for $35 Cnd, 9.6V for $40... That's pretty cheap as far as quality batteries go. If you can find the Japanese batteries, all the better. They don't make them like they used to...

Regards,

Robin

Reply to
Robin S.

DCPM motors as in cordless drills will run at reduced speed on lower-than-rated voltage. They'll also deliver lower-than-rated stall torque because stall current (from the lower voltage source) will be less. If the drill can do the job under these condx, it should work fine. Note that your "12 volt" is really more like 14.4 volts if the engine is running and the battery is being charged.

Use fairly heavy leads -- at least 12 gage. A 12-volt cordless drill can draw 20 amps or more under heavy load. Rather amaz>I'm thinking of getting a cordless drill, mostly for use on the boat

Reply to
Don Foreman

I ran into some years ago - drove down to go to summer school - was able to buy food but nothing to eat it with! - e.g. no forks or spoons or knives...

Martin

Reply to
Martin H. Eastburn

I believe that - I have a cobalt magnet motor that took my 2 meter wing span glider to 2000' several times with 12" prop. That sucker drew 32 amps off the 8V Ni-Cad pack. A couple of runs and that was it.

I used 500 strand super flex wire and an auto fuse. Heavy duty speed control. It is about the same size of the larger drill motors we use... Hum - come to think of it, I'll have to find a job for it now.

Martin

Reply to
Martin H. Eastburn

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