Do I Need an Impact Driver or a Combi Drill | Toolstop Guide

[Music] hello I'm Eric from Bosch and I like to chat to you about the burning question of do I need an impact driver called this impact driver or do I use a combi or a drill driver instead it's a very good question impact drivers are becoming much more commonly chosen now as do everything cordless drill/driver if you like and in some countries in the world sales of these things have even overtaken the humble cordless combi but first thing first tip is do not confuse an impact driver like this GDR with the Bosch model code they're over a GS B which can be referred to as an impact drill I know they both have the word impact in the description but they're very different indeed the impact drill that's describing the mode you'd use on your combi for drilling into brick and concrete okay and it makes that very famous sound which I can quickly demonstrate on the bench here one of a better thing to do okay so this is the impact mechanism on our combi on a drill driver which has got the impact function for drilling into masonry you can hear that impact mechanism working and the impact is acting in line with the drill bit the impact is actually being applied straight ahead behind the drill bit to allow you to get into the brickwork is as simple as that that's nothing to do with an impact driver an impact driver of course turns a drill bit or a screwdriver bit or little socket via normally a hex tool holder here this is a standard fitting with the bull locking grew so stuff doesn't fall out but the impact is happening in a radial sense okay so when you're tightening the screw or loosening the screw the impact is happening in a rotary sense there's there's nothing that would help you go into concrete with this so it's not an impact drill I can't over stress that so before we go on let's just have a quick look at the mechanism this is a larger mechanism from an impact wrench more about that in a moment but it's just for illustration purpose is to show you how it works we've got this set up with a socket on the end if you're going to use sockets on an impact wrench by the way make sure they're the thick-walled ones suitable for impact wrenches because these little chrome ones they might look pretty and are quite cheap to buy you will split them on on a powerful impact wrench if you're using it for bolting but we'll we'll go back to the mechanism so what we've got inside is a very simple mechanism it's a striker this heavy weight here is a striker and attached to the striker or influenced by the striker is a smaller part here which we call that anvil and you can guess how they work so if you'd like this is the hammer and that's the anvil that the hammer hits so when there's no resistance to driving a screw maybe you're driving a screw into a piece of soft wood then impact drivers and call this impact wrenches as well have a very high rotational speed which is fantastic they really do run some fairly significantly long screws in quite quickly until the material puts up a fight it starts to put the brakes on it becomes resistant to the screw being driven in then this mechanism comes into its own so we've got a simple bolt arrangement here okay which we put into the socket and you can see if I now start to turn this by hand that initially there's there's no there's no impacting taking place at all okay and the bolts going in very easily just taking up the slag into the metal plate now it's gone tight and you can see that the the striker is just a moment the striker is trying to move back it gets camming backwards it's on a spring okay and what happens is it then slides over the end of the the anvil with a clunk and it keeps on doing that okay so it's tightening in a series of shocks if you like or or impacts now I've only just done that by hand a couple of times and already if I try to loosen this bolt with a conventional spanner you know I'm having trouble doing that so essentially what that mechanism is done for you and we've all done it we've been doing a bit of home mechanics or under the bonnet of the car then with the days if you have a stubborn bolt that you want to loosen or you want to get it super tight and you don't have a very long spanner what we tend to do is we fit the spanner and we we hit the end of it with a hammer and that's exactly what an impact driver or an impact wrench does for you so it's producing a huge amount of torque potentially but in a series of mechanical impacts or hammer blows if you like so what's the benefit then of using an impact driver for driving screws for example well it can develop a huge amount of tightening force or loosening force so if you've got a stubborn screw you want to take out you're more likely to be able to it loose with an impact driver over a regular drill driver downside is very very heavy on in screwdriver bits for example so if you're using standard screwdriver bits these sort of gunmetal gray ones these hardened ones which are great for regular screwdrivers they do tend to wear out quite quickly so you should always consider using impact resistant screwdriver bits like these like these Bosch ones which you can see you've got a wasted portion in the middle it goes thinner in the middle this acts like a torsion bar and we'll take some of the shock the mechanical shock out between the Machine and the screwdriver bit and these will last obviously a lot longer I'll use it with impact drivers than but then with a standard screwdriver bit so if you want to save money it's worth investing in in some kind of impact resistant screwdriver bit set okay but benefits well first of all if you're driving a large screw or perhaps turning a big drill bit with a drill driver you do tend to get a reactive talk so if you're if you're driving a large orga bit or a large screw when the screw goes tight the machine tends to tends to react and tends to twist your twist your arm with an impact driver there is no reactive talk so even if you're naughty naughty up a set of steps and you're using an impact driver maybe at arm's length even when that bolt or that screw goes tight onto the bracketry what-have-you there is no tendency for the machine to kick backwards and possibly throw you off balance or injure your wrist so there's a plus side yeah so what about drilling well you can you can drill with these of course we have drill bits with a hex shank there so they're pretty good for working with wood drill bits there are still drill bits available for them including four four stainless steel so they are generally a good all-rounder there's no need for a two-speed gearbox because they are delivering talk as and when it's needed there is no torque control so if it's a talk sensitive application then you might want to check how tight you've you've tightened the bolt but just keep it in perspective you know talk it's numbers it's Newton meters and there's some big numbers attached to these like 110 130 150 250 Newton meters there are very very few applications certainly not driving screws into wood where you need anything like that tightening power so the other tip I would say is get some practice with this first because you can overdo it you can break the heads off of off of screws if they're if they're cheap screws you can chew out the the head which won't please your boss okay if he comes around looks at your handiwork when there's just craters in the top and so yeah and you can strip the threads of course so if you're using screws going into MDF or chipboard or what-have-you it's really easy to overcook it shall we say and don't forget there are some quite dinky little impact drivers this is one of our 12 volt brushless machines are fantastic it's rated at 110 Newton meters phenomenal for such a tiny tiny tool so more and more choice available for you guys but you know what I would say also have a combi in the tool kit - these these are great and as a comm nation kit two tools in one box and then you've got the benefits of the the masonry drilling capabilities here if you want to use torque control you can use that and you know the usual party piece with impact drivers is driving in really long screws like this these frame fixing screws or wood fixing screws this is normally a party piece but yeah be careful you know you're talking about over a hundred Newton meters on an impact driver but actually this combi in first gear will beat this one the impact driver when driving this long screw I can demonstrate that if you wish the other thing of course is if you want really big talk if maybe you're maintaining garden machinery maybe you're a maintenance person you're working on conveyor belts racking where there are bolts nuts and bolts then an impact driver is not really the best bet because you do get a limiting factor through the fact that you're using accessories with a quarter inch hex this is really not a lot of metal so what tends to happen is that mechanism I showed you earlier is really thumping the the output spindle here but of course you get this kind of torsion bar effect even the screw becomes a torsion bar so you're thumping away at this end and the screw is actually twisting it's almost like you're hitting a spring with a hammer so the actual talk that's being applied to the thread is quite small if it's being applied in sharp shock so you get what I mean so if you're using a regular drill driver that is delivering the torque in a linear fashion by turning gears you can sometimes get a faster fixing done with a straightforward drill driver maybe I should demonstrate that let's just put the let's just put the socket there big ol eight millimeter socket there also impact resistance impact control we're going to drive this long screw in to the wood maybe we can just do it on this end and just have a look at the at the progress okay so this one's rated at 106 newton meters so you think this will be going in like crazy that's when it starts to impact other downside of course of impact drivers they're quite noisy but you can use ear defenders let's see how we get on now you can see at this point it's already slowing down the screws quite deeply embedded into the the beam here so I'm just literally going to take this accessory off and fit it into this little combi and this little combi is probably rated at around about 60 Newton meters maximum torque so it's so it's nowhere near on paper as Torquay as the as the impact driver buts that were in first gear and drilling mode so we're using the low gear to give us a decent amount of torque and just see the difference okay so it's actually significantly quicker because it's not applying the talk and little pulses does that make sense so impact driver fantastic impact wrench with a square drive here that's the only difference between an impact wrench and impact driver the output spindle is a half inch square drive if you're into mechanics you'll know that's a typical fitting on the back of a socket and of course being a bigger spindle more mass there these can deliver those big numbers so if you do need to bolt things down really really firmly or you're putting wheels on vehicles this sort of stuff bearing in mind you can't limit or adjust the torque on an impact wrench or an impact driver it's a little bit like this so be careful that the impact wrench will do that job for you if you're into bolting but what if you want the best of both worlds well you've got two choices really you can fit an adapter there is our accessories available so if you have a GD s for example this is an impact wrench and you want to run the occasional screw in that's obviously needs a screwdriver bit with a hex fitment then you simply put this adapter on the end and now you can put regular screwdriver bits and do the same sort of stuff with we've done before but remember you've got a very powerful machine and you are driving a little screw so give it a chance don't be too trigger-happy get a bit of practice gives you a bit of extra versatility Bosch being quite clever thought about this a while ago and we've actually got a best of both worlds if you like machining in the shape of the G DX products because this one has as you can see a square drive on the spindle here but inside you have a quarter inch hex as well so you don't need to buy the adapter you can drive screws or run sockets as well a little bit fancier of course it has you know some of the G DX models have selectable speeds which have an effect on them on the total torque but again it's not torque control so you've got quite a choice there really but I'm hoping that gives you an eye dear about impact drivers they're not impact drills don't use them for drilling into brick and and masonry and there's certainly a home I think in typical tradesmen's tool kit for a decent combi okay and an impact driver so have fun hope that's been useful for you [Music]

Channel: Toolstop

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Keywords: toolstop, professional, power tools, demo, features, how to, bosch, makita, dewalt, hitachi, drill driver, combi drill, impact driver, expert guide, drill vs driver difference, drill vs impact driver, drill vs impact driver uses, brushless drill vs impact driver, impact driver vs drill, impact driver uses, cordless drill vs impact driver, cordless drill, drill driver vs impact driver, what is an impact driver, what is a drill driver, difference between drill drivers and impact drivers

Id: x2JRhT4tvaM

Length: 14min 43sec (883 seconds)

Published: Wed May 02 2018