Impact Wrench vs Impact Driver - What's The Difference?

impact drivers and impact wrenches are both types of impact tools that do a lot of great work but they have different designs and they're for somewhat different purposes we've got our team together here at protoolreviews.com to show you the difference between them you can make a quick call on which impact tool to use by looking at the drive style now generally speaking impact drivers are screw driving specialists they accept quarter inch hex shank driver bits so when you're driving screws like phillips head or square or torx that's the tool to use you can even drill holes with them if you use compatible bits impact wrenches on the other hand have a square drive on the front sockets and some other accessories fit under that and it's what you're going to want to use with hex head fasteners like nuts and bolts and even timber screws let's dive a bit deeper into these collets and drives for a minute impact drivers all have that quarter inch hex collet no matter what size performance level or voltage that you got most common impact wrenches are going to have a quarter inch 3 8 inch or half inch square drives and that measures the distance across from side to side not front to back like some people might think now those drives are going to come in two different main styles and that's going to be either with a friction ring or with a pin detent now our team prefers the friction ring because it's easier on and off but there are a lot of pros that like that pin detent for the extra security there are bigger impact wrenches in that same realm and they use three quarter inch or even one inch square drives now those are really industrial level tools for when you need really high torque there's also a special kind of impact wrench that we use for utility work it has a collet similar to an impact driver but it's 7 16 of an inch instead of quarter inch and we use a different set of accessories with it but it has the power of an impact wrench so it's a lot stronger than your standard impact driver there are some exceptions to what we just laid out though you can get socket adapters or nut driver bits to work with your impact driver and use them on hex head fasteners you can also get adapters that let you use quarter inch driver bits with your impact wrench but just because you can adapt them doesn't mean you should adapt them too much power and you could be shearing off fastener heads too little power and you could burn up your motor or it might just not get the job done [Music] when it comes to power sources you can still find a corded impact driver if you really want one but the vast majority that you find on construction sites around the country are cordless impact wrenches come in both corded and cordless versions but that classic sound that you hear from the racetrack or the automotive shop that's from a pneumatic air impact wrench now tradesmen are typically using the cordless models on construction sites and utility work those kinds of things but mechanics still heavily rely on air tools however we are seeing a trend where more and more cordless is making it into the automotive shop pneumatic impact wrenches can be less expensive and they also tend to work a little faster but you need a compressor and a hose to work them so make sure that that's in your cost calculation if you don't have those already [Music] when it comes to power you typically get more out of an impact wrench than you do an impact driver they also display that power differently impact drivers use inch pounds when it comes to displaying their torque and impact wrenches use foot pounds but just like it is with linear inches and feet just multiply or divide by 12 to get the right measurement if you've got inch pounds divide by 12 and you get foot pounds if you have foot pounds multiply by 12 to get inch pounds for comparison now on the impact driver you can find models that exceed 2 000 inch pounds of torque and we find that anything that's got at least 1600 inch pounds is great for professional use on the other hand impact wrenches start around 100 foot pounds and it can easily exceed a thousand foot pounds of torque when we're working on vehicles we'll usually use a compact impact wrench with at least 200 foot pounds of torque for most basic work but then we'll switch over to a mid torque that's got at least 400 foot pounds for doing lug nuts one thing to keep in mind is that most manufacturers are going to market their nut busting torque or breakaway force that's how much it can actually loosen for example we have an impact wrench that can do 650 foot-pounds of breakaway torque but only 450 fastening [Music] speed is a different story than torque for our cordless models most impact drivers are going to max out around 3 600 rpm and that's faster than the cordless impact wrenches which can be under 2000 rpm now that trend completely flips around when you're talking about air where a good mid torque impact wrench can be over 8 000 rpm on the smaller side some impact drivers and impact wrenches are built on the same exact foundation with just different drives on the front now other than those most of the time your impact driver is going to be much lighter and more compact than your impact wrenches pneumatics on the other hand they're going to be lighter than your cordless models with impact wrenches the size and weight generally increases along with the power level quarter inch models are just going to be the smallest while you're going to go up to half inch on the mid torque and then when you get those extreme ones three quarter inch and one inch power levels they're going to be really big bulky tools [Music] in a perfect world we don't every type of impact driver and impact wrench so we have the right tool for the right job no matter what we're doing now if you're just getting started on construction projects or diy projects around the house go with an impact driver you get more use out of the screwdriving specialist if pulling transmission on a car this weekend is more your speed now you're looking for an impact wrench look for terms like compact mid torque and high torque to give you an idea of the relative size and performance level of what you're looking for if you're not sure we'd recommend you start with a half inch mid torque cordless model you can go with the cordless side it's a lot more convenient than using pneumatic plus you can get other tools that work on the same battery we hope you found our video helpful if you have any questions or feedback for us please feel free to leave those in the comments below and as always thanks for watching help us out by subscribing to our channel below if you enjoyed what you saw hit that like button and turn on notifications to stay up to date on the latest videos

Channel: Pro Tool Reviews

Views: 320,542

Keywords: Impact Driver, Impact Wrench, Impact Driver Bit, Foot-pound, Inch-pound, RPM, Auto, Mechanic, Industrial, Milwaukee, Dewalt, Mid-Torque, Compact, DIY, Professional, Contractor, Pneumatic, Ridgid, Bosch, Makita, Brushless, Cordless, 18V, 20V, M18, M18 Fuel, Impactor, Automotive

Id: Da2VSYitUkM

Length: 5min 54sec (354 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 23 2021