Difference between Drill Drivers & Impact Drivers

hi everyone I'm charlie white and today I'm going to be explaining to you all the key difference between drill drivers and impact drivers now I had a question for one of my subscribers a few months ago ask me what the difference was between a drill driver and an impact driver now to me the difference is very obvious and I use these two very different tools for different jobs in my day job but chances are if you're an occasional DIY and you're watching this video you've probably got one of these a drill driver rather than one of these an impact driver so I thought today's video we start with a bit of theory I'll tell you what the difference is between the two I'll then do a little bit of a practical to show you how the two work very differently and then I've got a little tip at the end which i think is really important if you're buying either a drill driver or an impact driver a lot of people overlook [Applause] so the cordless drill which also doubles up as a screwdriver is by all accounts the most popular power tool of all time and that really is no accident because particularly for just embarking on your DIY journey you want a one tool that does loads of jobs you don't in buying lots of different tools so the drill driver is fantastic because obviously you set it to drill you've got the keyless chuck here which accepts a whole range of bits from circular drill bits like this hex shaped drill bits and then brilliantly if you want to turn it into a screwdriver you put your hex shanked screwdriver bit in and if that wasn't enough you've got your slip clutch on the top that you can adjust so that your screwdriver stops when the screw hits the right depth in the wood or whatever your drips going into so that's why these drills that double up as screwdrivers have become such a popular power tool and for most people this is probably the only cordless screwdriver you're ever going to need it certainly was for me for quite a few years but as your DIY improves and you're suddenly perhaps finding yourself wanting to drive home a lot of screws or you're finding that the drill driver just doesn't give you the power you need to drive home those screws or crucially you are finding it far too much of a faff to constantly change between the drill bit and the screwdriver bit on this little versatile tool what do you do well that is where the impact driver comes into its own this little tool is specifically engineered to do one thing drive home screws which it does faster and easier and more powerfully than any other drill driver would be capable of doing now I just want to point out right now that obviously everything you see in today's video is Ryobi that's because I thought right be tools for years they don't ever change the connector on their battery which means it's fantastic for me because I can just buy loads of different tools in the range and keep using these batteries but don't let me think I'm trying to advertise Ryba to you because I'm not there so not pay me anything to do this video there are lots of different impact drivers on the market some of them coming up on the screen now so if you're influenced by this video to go and buy yourself an impact driver do some googling do some shopping around and find the bit impact driver that works best for you so as you can see it looks pretty similar to drill driver but it has one very important difference instead of the keyless chuck you saw just now it has a collet which only accepts hex shanked driver bits these screwdriver bits come in various different shapes and sizes I've got extension bits here which I use a lot in the day job and then you've got an impact driver extension bit here the impact driver uses bit rotation and concussive blows that sound you heard at the start of the video power drive screws home and I can be showing you later on this video this means that you can power screws into the thickest deepest hardest wood the upshot of this is the impact driver gives you raw unadulterated power the sort of power that can do this sort of damage this is my extension bit that basically sheared off recently whilst we were using it or whether Dewalt impact driver on site it's also capable of completely snapping impact driver screw bits like you see here and finally bit footage we've taken on site on Friday where you see the impact driver shearing off a screw head that simply could not be removed from a wooden kern pole in fact typically up to two to three times more turning force or torque than the average drill driver however despite this raw power is actually more comfortable and easier to use than the drill driver the reason for that is because the concussive action that that you hear when it's driving the screw home is actually transferring all of the force into the screw and away from your hand now the impact driver does not have the slip clips that you saw on the drill driver but that doesn't matter because the concussive action actually gives you a huge amount of control and precision when you're driving in screws rather than the slip clutch it becomes all about how much pressure you exert on the trigger so that's nothing me rambling let's crack on and show these tools in action and for that I picked an old bit of timber that I've had lying around actually took it out of the ceiling when I was doing up the dormer window in my daughter's bedroom this is a lovely old piece of oak you can just tell by the weight just the quality of this bit of timber and you don't want to be fooled by the slightly mottled knackered shabby looking exterior of this lovely bit timber as I'm gonna show you that [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] look at this this is an absolutely beautiful piece of timber and as far as I'm concerned is going to give us the ultimate test pitting the drill driver against the impact driver and to make this test fair I'm equipping both tools with a fully charged for a aged battery and for those of you who are wondering for aah the a H stands for ampere hour or amp hour which basically stands for the total amount of charge that a battery can deliver in an hour what does that really mean well effectively a little 1.3 aah battery like this is going to last a lot less time than this monster this big 5a H battery which is one of the most powerful batteries you can get so for example if you're powering a radio on site or you're doing some light drilling work the 1.3 H battery is going to be more than enough for your requirements but if you've got an SDS drill you're going to want a four or five a H battery if you've got a circular saw as featured in a recent video you're going to want a four or a five a H battery and as I'll be showing you at the end of this video the battery power is absolutely crucial when you're assessing the performance of a drill driver or an impact driver driving home screws into really hard wood so first up I'm going to try and drive this five millimeter diameter of 100 millimeter screw in using the drill driver with this drill drive you got to exert quite a lot of downward pressure to avoid the screw bit flipping around on the top of the screw head [Music] [Applause] well impressively that went all the way in but it was quite a lot of effort [Applause] then whether you saw that but there's smoke coming off that screw it's seriously hot well actually that didn't work too badly and I had to put quite a lot of pressure on the drill to get the screw into the bit of oak but we'll come on to in a minute I think the power of this battery was largely the reason why that screw was able to drive right through the piece of oak let's do the exactly the same thing now using the impact driver you can immediately hear those concussive blows as the driver sets to work on the screw that's gone straight through the piece of oak and it was just a lot less effort for me than the drill driver where I was having to apply a lot more downward force onto the screw so that shows you the difference between the drill driver and impact driver and in fact I have to say I was quite impressed that my drill driver was able to drill right through this solid piece of oak without stopping but I'm going to show you something really interesting now the main reason he was able to do that was because I had a 4h battery on the drill look what happens when I substitute the four aah batteries for these 1.3 eh batteries I'm gonna start with the drill driver okay he goes it's stopped this is a fully charged battery I've only just taking it off charge it's trying but it's now completely stopped I'm gonna do exactly the same test now with my impact driver again using the same power battery again the concussive blow start firstly notice is it's tackling the task a lot more Abele just going quite slow but even my impact driver is struggling with this screw still going round but very very slowly but if I swap that battery back to my big old 4-h you can instantly see the difference so I really hope you found today's video useful and I hope it's helped you to make up your mind if you were thinking about an impact driver or you just didn't know what one was impact drivers are making inroads into the drill driver market and I've heard recently that they're introducing attachments for the collet so that you can actually use them to drill as well as how far in screws but right now it's just a really good really awesomely powerful dedicated screwdriver tool but remember my point about the batteries to get the most out of your impact drive you've got to have a powerful battery mind you it's worth still having a really light battery in your toolbox for those more sort of everyday jobs where you don't want to be lugging around all the extra weight that you get with the four or five H battery like everything it's just you've got to find the right tool for the job you're doing this tiny little 1.3 H 12 volt Ryobi drill driver is a super little light tool and one of the fitters that works for me actually prefers using this most of the time for the sort of lighter weight jobs ways not drilling into walls that you just attaching screws into MDF that sort of thing so thanks for watching today's video if you enjoyed it please click on the like button below and if you're new to my channel I'd love to have you subscribe you can do that by clicking on the link here see you soon

Channel: Charlie DIYte

Views: 1,297,303

Rating: 4.7533059 out of 5

Keywords: drill vs impact driver, cordless drill, what is an impact driver, what is a drill driver, difference between drill drivers and impact drivers, charlie diyte, ryobi, makita, de walt, bosch

Id: JVMwp4Hm7OQ

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Sun May 27 2018