Is The Cordless Drill Becoming Obsolete?

I gotta admit this used to be my favorite Power Tool and now it's one of the loneliest Power Tools in my collection it's not that it's not awesome I mean I just don't use it much anymore and I guess you could say I'm seeing someone new now don't get me wrong these drills are awesome they have all kinds of functions and capabilities but more and more with newer and better bits coming out as well as the types of DIY projects I'm working on I find myself reaching for my impact driver so much more and I don't just use it for driving but also for drilling just to make sure we're all on the same page since not everybody's familiar with an impact driver an impact driver what it does is it uses a hammering function or a twisting and impact function to not only drive the Fasteners in but it's going to slam this little metal disc basically against the drive shaft in the same direction that you're driving the screw so if you're driving it in righty tighty or clockwise what it's going to do is it's going to slam this over and over and give you that extra strength so that the drill or the driver in this case is doing the work so that you don't have to and that the motor doesn't have to work as hard not to show you what this looks like I've taken a little chunk out of this particular heart drill here and you can see right inside here at how it works now you'll notice in slow motion here as it's driving a screw down it's going to use that same rotational force and Slam against that drive shaft over and over and to try to turn that screw into place this uses less battery than a drill it's lighter than a drill and it puts less strain on your body your wrist your arm everything like that than a drill wood when it comes to driving in particular it was actually only a generation ago that impact drivers weren't really a thing for Di wires or for homeowners your dad probably like mine had a Black and Decker black corded drill and it had a key Chuck and the key was always getting lost impact drivers weren't part of that life so it was only about seven years ago that I got this set right here from rigid and they have their lifetime warranty which is great but as I got this I really still gravitated towards my drill I use that for most everything and it wasn't until I got this new compact or sub compact kit here that I started realizing oh my goodness this little thing is so light and so strong and so capable I gotta be using this more traditionally drills and drivers are sold together in a kit because they each have different strengths drills for example can hold pretty much anything that you can put in the Chuck it can be as little as maybe 1 16 of an inch and most of them have a half inch Chuck so you can go all the way up to a half inch which is pretty handy in addition a drill has a lot of customized settings so you've got a clutch here which you can adjust the torque for what you're driving to not overdo it you've got Gears so you can go fast and lower torque or slower with higher torque some drills have a hammer function so if you're working with masonry you can just put it into the hammer mode and that will make that job so much easier maybe even a little stronger than that with the drill is the fact that these are comfortable they're familiar we've been using these as diy-ers for Generations so if the drill is so great why am I not using it so much anymore it's because really I think I can do most of everything I need to with the impact drill and it's smaller it's lighter it's easier to use it's a little more basic and it gets the job done for pretty much any project that I'm on I find myself doing all kinds of projects with electrical lately and this little impact driver is lightweight and can really do everything that I need it to do if I need to tighten screws loose and screws no problem even if I need to drill three quarter inch holes through the studs to pull my Romex through this can handle it and do it easily I also build a lot of things whether it's a deck or a clubhouse or right now I'm working on starting on a carport project guess what my impact driver can do pretty much everything I need for all of those as well I also repair a lot of things and that's just a lot of removing screws messing around with something to get it right and putting the screws back in again impact driver this right here is something else that's changing quite a bit on the tool scene these days we're getting all these bits that are designed specifically to be used in impact drivers so they've got the quarter inch hex fitting they fit right in they're easy and they're quick these new bits that are designed for impact drills have this little section here called the torsion section and this gives a tiny bit of flexibility so that as that impacting is happening which can be really hard on a bit a lot of that is absorbed right here so that the bit lasts longer it's not as brittle and it's not as prone to Breaking as that impact is happening over and over again when it comes to drilling you can now buy entire sets of titanium drill bits that are made for impact drivers you'll notice that on a lot of these for example even on these cheap Hercules ones from Harbor Freight this set doesn't cost very much but it says impact rated meaning it's designed to be used with an impact driver one of the ones I trust a little bit more is the Shockwave technology here in the red Helix Milwaukee bits these are impact Duty meaning they've tested them to be used and to last longer there's actually changes in the design of the flutes and in the core of the material itself that the bit is made out of to help it last longer in an impact driver this 23 piece set from DeWalt for example has a lot of those same features it's basically made Aid to work with an impact driver and has that added strength so that it's less likely to break or snap when being used with all those impacts hitting it now I'll be the first to admit when I'm buying consumables I'm going to go to Harbor Freight and see if I can pick up a set like this you can literally get every size from 1 64th up to a half inch in one kit here for like 20 bucks new and that's without coupons with coupons you get these free when you buy something and none of these work with my impact driver so that can be an issue but if some of these sizes here aren't what I need and I need something in between then I'll grab these and I'll grab my drill no big deal when I needed to drill holes through the framing up in my attic just recently to run some new wires I was more than happy to use my Diablo Speed Demon Spade bits in my impact driver and they work beautifully pre-drilling not a problem I can pre-drill with these I can countersink you bet no problem in most cases the impact driver also uses less power than the drill does to get the same job done so my battery is going to last longer as well just another bonus speaking of bonuses when I'm using my impact driver because of that ratcheting impact motion that it does it's much less likely to cause me to have Kickback on my drill I've had a few times when this thing has really cranked my arm over and caused me to injure my wrist or my arm so with this I don't have to worry about that again just another reason that the impact driver is going to do a lot of good for me there are of course drills that have what's called an anti-kickback feature built into them that's starting to become more and more common with drills which is awesome but with impact drivers I really don't have to worry about it just to make sure I'm not misunderstood I do think drills are still very useful I will not be getting rid of my drills anytime soon or probably ever it's just that since impact drivers have come along and all of the bits and the bit technology that's coming along with them I find myself using my drill less and less now I know that not everybody is going to agree with me on this and that's okay this is just based on my experience and my personal opinion for the projects I do and how I use my tools one thing that's made things a little more interesting for me is I recently picked up this M12 fuel set I've got a drill and a driver from Milwaukee here now this has been a total game changer for me this little guy right here so tiny so little and so powerful I feel like I've Got A Fistful of Steel I've got just a handful of power right here with this tiny little thing I mean this thing weighs next to nothing but it's solidly built I've got a lot of metal components here and this is just a very well built little machine that can do pretty much everything I need I've got the super bright LEDs in the right spot up here here and I've even got control over my different speeds and I've even got a self-tapping screw set here now again nothing in this video is sponsored in any way I purchased everything with my own money just my experience here that I'm sharing unfortunately one of the big downsides of these impact drivers is the noise yes that noise it is obnoxious it is constant and we know it's working and everything but we don't have to put up with that with drills so why do we have to put up with that with impact drivers well guess what there's a solution for that too in my research I found this really cool tool this is called a pulse driver or a hydraulic impact driver the result is the same you get that same impact and it's rotational it's happening in the same direction as you're drilling which is awesome and it makes it super effective but it's up to two times quieter than a traditional impact driver foreign not only that but these surge drivers and these are actually available by rigid and Makita if I'm not mistaken also have these they're just bigger these guys are actually more powerful than a comparable impact driver of the same size which is amazing so they're quieter they're stronger and they're still tiny they're still light and they're still super capable that's a win-win so when do you use your drill instead of an impact driver there are several scenarios here one is if you're doing any sort of fine Woodworking and you need very Precision holes for example you need those clean edges you need that consistent drill speed and you don't need that noise that accompanies the impact drivers then grab your drill it's going to do a great job for you another one is if you need to use the clutch on a drill to limit the amount of torque that's going into a Fastener so let's say you're driving a screw it's small it's going into some soft wood you don't want to overdo it you can set your torque and that's a lot easier to control than with an impact driver the other occasion is if you've got a bit that just doesn't have a quarter inch hex shank and you need to use it throw in your drill and you're good to go I mean mean drills are still very useful now for everything else I'm going to be sticking with my impact driver or my pulse driver these things are pretty amazing now if you are going to be using your drill and when you use it you may as well know how to use it I've got a video that you can check out right here that shows the five features of a drill and over 82 percent of people that I pulled don't actually know how to use all these features so be sure to check that out so you can use it properly I also found down here a secret or hidden feature in most drills that so many people don't know about I would honestly guess that maybe like 98 of people who use drills don't know about this feature so check that out right here I'm Nils with learn to DIY thanks for watching

Channel: LRN2DIY

Views: 2,514,506

Keywords: diy, how-to, lrn2diy

Id: OZ-G-bD8zvE

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 02 2022