I use cordless tools regularly, and you are hard pressed to beat DeWalt. For the weekend warrior, this one would be fine. 18v is plenty good power, but me still likey my yellow and black. ni-cad batteries suck, tho. Go with li-ion or nmh. Just my .02 worth for you dorm rats who think you are going to remodel ur 8x12 cell next semester with a 18v cordless drill.
I was going to buy a Makita drill for someone - how does this compare?
Three things to remember about Nicad batteries:
1: Never recharge them while hot - heat kills NiCads. Let the battery cool at least half an hour before recharging it, and preferably an hour or more.
2: The “memory effect” is easy to avoid. Just make it a point to run the battery near to - but not all the way to! - empty on a regular basis. When the drill starts to slow, that’s low enough. You only need to do this every dozen or so charge cycles, but I suggest doing it on the first one as well.
3: They should be either recycled or treated as toxic household waste. Cadmium is nasty stuff.
People who buy this will end up doing a lot of screwing.
I’m a motorcycle mechanic and bought a set with this drill from either home depot or lowe’s (can’t remember) It’s not the most powerful drill I’ve used. But the set I came with had a impact driver that is weak enough that I don’ worry too much about braking bolts I’m taking out. The drill has served me better then I expected and would do well around a home. It’s not powerful enough to drill through steal all day at a job site, Small cute and perfect for drilling wood and aluminum around the home.
1: So whilst working on a project, you should wait an hour for the battery to cool before charging it for another hour? Time is money, baby.
2: How do you know a battery is “almost, but not fully discharged”? Ask it? First indication it’s toast - It doesn’t make the drill drill anymore!
3: Throw the whole damned thing in the trash and buy a better drill!
Don’t you just love a good screw?
NiCd batteries are better than NiMH for power tools. They produce more power more quickly because of lower internal resistance. Also, memory effect is not an issue because you would have to discharge the same amount EVERY time. That just never happens, hence no memory effect. Li ion is better than NiCd because of charge per weight and lower overall weight, but you pay a premium for it. NiMH has replaced NiCd in most applications because quick power is not an issue, and NiMH does not have the environmental impact that cadmium has.
HItachi makes good tools. I’ve had a Hit. compound miter saw for 12+ years and have beaten the crap out of it, and it still works like a champ. I just don’t think this is their best foot forward. Their corded industrial strength stuff is top notch though. They make nice excavators and heavy equipment. Should stick with what they do well and stay out of the cordless tool realm, imho.
Costco has a 3/8" Hitachi Drill with two Lithium Batteries for about the same price. This is fine if you have a need for 1/2" but after using Lithium, it would be harsh to try to use Nicad. My 1/2" drill is a plug in type because when I need that type of power, I want it to work right away without waiting for charging and full power all of the time.
I’ve been using 2 different Makita drills over the past 8 or 9 years now, both of them 14.4. I’ve never had a situation where it was underpowered. The first lasted about 5 years before the switch died. The second is still my primary drill. I also have a Makita corded drill that I use occasionally but not often.
Ni-Cd? Uh, no. Last time I bought a cordless drill with Ni-Cd batteries, it ran great for a couple years, and then became a useless paperweight. Cost of replacing the batteries approached the cost of buying a whole new rig. Never again.
It is as a drill!
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Heat is bad for EVERy battery. NiCd are actually some of the most resilient.
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Running batteries down is one of the worst things to do. Batteries often come wired together, and since they fail at different rates, one invariably goes bad first. When this happens, you get reverse charging across the dead battery, which causes bridging to occur, permanantly damaging each the battery one at as a time as they fail. The best approach is that when the drill starts to weaken, stop using the battery and put it on the charger. The power curve for the batteries is not linear, so when they start to fail, they fail quickly.
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This is the only reasonn NiCd fell out favor versus NiMH. If environmental concerns were not an issue, development would have continued on NiCd batteries instead of NiMH and they would have the higher capacities. That said, even a lower capacity NiCd battery often delivers more power for longer than a higher capacity NiMH battery because of NiCd’s lower internal resistance. When it comes to performance, especially for high drain applications like power tools, I prefer NiCd, even with the advances made by NiMH batteries.
Dang, now we’ve moved on to power tools.
Orthopedia Registrar: I am very good with power tools.
Anesthesia Registrar: There is no blood loss if there is no cardiac output.
The 7-piece bit set looks useless. Biggest bit is only 3/16"… Pull that out and she is going to laugh at you.
Sorry Woot. This ain’t no deal.
I don’t know about the NiCad Hitachi drills, but for the same price you can get their latest Lithium Ion drill reconditioned right here.
Lithium Ion kicks NiCad’s butt! I have this L-I drill and love it. I also have 2 L-I drills I’ve used every day for more than 3 years and they are still going strong on the original batteries.
And no, I don’t work for Hitachi or anything like that. In my experience, though, you can’t beat their reconditioned tools.
Also, one of the most important things is the battery charger. You want one that senses delta V, and then switches to trickle charging when charging is complete. Cheap chargers either have timers or constantly charge the battery. These are the worst and will kill the batteries from both overcharging and heat buildup. As a general rule, the quick chargers have the built in circuitry to properly charge and protect the batteries. The chargers that have long charging times have the timers or are always on and should be avoided at all costs.