The Most MISUNDERSTOOD Feature On Your Drill

[Music] that is so loud so this is the clutch collar and we're going to make sure that you're totally familiar with it we're also going to be doing a little cutaway to show you exactly how this functions mechanically on the inside so you can understand when to use it how to use it and how it Compares from one drill manufacturer to another for example now along the way I'm going to be sharing with you five lesser known facts about the clutch so whether you're totally new to this or you're super experienced with power tools in general I can just about guarantee you that there's going to be a few in here that will be new to you first let's talk about when you would use the clutch now the clutch settings depending on your drill you're going to have some different Drive settings so on this one right here for example we have the hammer mode we rotate it over once and you see a drill bit that's for drilling holes and then on this particular one your only option is to then go through the numbers of the graduations on your clutch now as long as I'm in that 11:1 mode it's in driver mode so it's going to drive something a Fastener a screw Maybe loosen something and that's what it's meant for now that's not to be confused with this little guy this is an impact driver and it's whole job is to be able to drive screws loosen things tighten things it's not necessarily designed for drilling holes but I have my own school of thought on why this thing can be used for just about everything so on the driver here just remember that the clutch should only really be used if you're driving screws or Fasteners of some sort could be lag bolts could be screws anything like that maybe one of the best ways to show you this is to take these 2 and 1/2 in screws and I'm going to drive them into this Douglas fur 4x4 and I'll do it at each of the 11 graduations on our collar here here we go wow that is terrible so that should have been way softer it drove it way down past the face of this even in the lightest setting which is not good that means this thing is putting way too much torque on even the lightest settings not something I'm going to recommend at all so to show this a little bit differently I'm going to grab that that Flex again and we'll go every couple steps on this one okay setting two here we go okay setting four six 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 and finally 24 from Kitchen Echo dinner is ready now just to show you the difference I'm also going to put it in drill mode which means it won't back off at all it's going to go full bore all the time let's take a look at the difference in drill mode so no clutch enabled on this one woo that's the difference that went all the way down and would have kept going all the way through if I had a longer bit now this isn't a perfect example but it does definitely show exactly how much torque is applied or roughly how much torque is applied at least to each of the screws based on the clutch setting so again this is 2 4 6 all the way up to 24 and then down here this one that went way in exactly no clutch on that one now I got to admit I'm not one to usually ask for anything about subscribers or likes or that kind of thing but this is year 12 for me of making YouTube videos I'm at currently right around 750,000 subs and I want this year really badly to hit 1 million when we hit a million I'm going to be doing power tool giveaways tool set giveaways other DIY product giveaways and even some cash so hopefully you can join me in hitting that subscribe let's see if we can get to a million by the end of 2024 after over 12 years of doing YouTube videos thanks so much so the obvious question is why do you need the clutch what are some circumstances in which those clutch settings are really going to help you and one of the reasons is if you're doing anything that's a little bit delicate in terms of smaller screws so a small screw like this for example is one that will often require you to not go full full bore on the thing you don't need 1,400 inbs of torque to drive this thing into anything really you might want to do something with the lighter clutch setting if you've got a small screw a great example of this is when you're installing cabinet hardware you don't want to go too crazy on that the wood is typically at least a little bit softer and we don't need to try to strip out that screw or that screw hole by using too much torque when you're installing cup hinges in your doors for example they have these fairly small and delicate little screws on either side of the cup and those ones just need a fairly light touch and the clutch is perfect for making sure that you don't overdo it one that I come across even more commonly though is pre-drilled and pre- counter sunk screws so for example I'm going to use my Milwaukee with this counter sync drill bit here drill a little hole in here so I don't need a lot of torque on this only the threads are going to be doing some grabbing so I'm going to take my Flex I'm going to turn it down to number one and make sure it's in the driving mode here I'm going to start with number one and work my way up from there you always want to start with the minimal amount of torque that you can get away with and then work your way up to find that sweet spot so here we are in number one look at that that's almost perfect I want it to go just a little bit more so I'm going to go to three here good that's exactly where I want it to be so something like this where it's counter sunk and it's pre-drilled a three is all I'm going to need because I'm just having enough torque for the threads to grab onto the surrounding fibers of wood I've got my clutch set to three I can go full bore and not worry about being really delicate because it's going to stop itself boom perfect fit perfectly flush every single time because my clutch is at the right setting now let's take a look inside the drill to see exactly how this works and this is a good time to bring up our first fun little fact here something lesser known which is that the pistol grip or drill style that we know today with a trigger and everything this has been around for about 100 plus years but it's actually been over 7 5 years since the clutch was invented by Black & Decker now black and& Decker is the company that is currently called Stanley Black and& Decker and they own DeWalt and Porter Cable and Craftsman and several other brands but this is what they invented was a version of this it hasn't changed that much in all that time uh that year was 1946 so this has been around a long time I've got my trusty Warrior 18vt drill here from Harbor Freight this was my sacrificial drill here so I used my multi-tool here the oscillating multi- tool to just cut inside here so we can see this now right up here you can see that I'm on the highest setting of the clutch which means it's going to offer the most torque or the most resistance I'm going to try to rotate the drill so that you can see exactly what's going on so as I rotate it this way it's starting to separate away from the transmission area and now you see there's quite a gap there right here in between this Black Shaft part here with the threads and then the body of the drill now that we've seen how the threaded portion here works and we can see it tightening up again here all the way like that let's take this thing apart a little bit further and show you the actual mechanics of how this makes it happened we're going to make Warrior take apart Warrior here so this is the warrior impact driver and we're going to use that to take apart its cousin brother whatever that relationship might be okay here we go now if we take this apart we can see here is the Big Spring that compresses and gives us that resistance as turn the collar for the clutch now this brings us to lesser known fact number [Music] three which is the mechanics of what's inside here basically there's just a spring inside that collar and then on the opposite side of that housing there is a metal plate that has teeth in it and those will engage or disengage with the ball bearings inside the housing so that spring is going to push the housing closer or further to the teeth on that metal ring and that's going to engage or disengaged based on the amount of resistance that it's receiving so once it reaches that certain amount of resistance or Torque then it's going to disengage and no longer spin the drive if you get a kick out of the shirts that I wear I try to keep it funny and keep it light because us diyers we got enough on our plate let's have some fun with it so be sure to check out the links to our merch in the description below now that we've seen exactly how the clutch mechanism works as far as the mechanics inside let's talk about these numbers on the collar here and this brings me to what my second lesser known fact which is that these are completely arbitrary these numbers will vary quite a bit from manufacturer to manufacturer and even on two different drills within the same manufacturer's line so that's something you need to always be aware of in fact these do not represent any units at all you'll be hard pressed to find a manual that says number seven is 100 in pounds of torque and number eight is 120 in pounds of torque or anything like that these are not specific units they're really just kind of arbitrary graduations in between the full torque capability of the drill and the least amount that it can produce think of it that way as an illustration of this I'm going to use this Milwaukee drill to show exactly what the clutch settings on this one will do this one has 16 clutch settings so I'll use each of those as opposed to the 11 that the or 12 I guess that the flex drill had so I'll do these 16 right next to it and you'll see that these are going to line up at least a little bit differently in fact even if we did another set of the flex ones back to back or right next to these You' see a difference there so it's not always the same but as you can see here these are a little bit different as well from Brand to brand with flex you're getting a pretty nice set there with Milwaukee it's really a little aggressive and then with DeWalt even more aggressive wow so that's the DeWalt on level one the least torque essentially that it's going to be able to produce it went all the way down flush which is crazy so this thing is way too powerful has basically zero sensitivity it's just a hammer I mean it's like I'm going all the way or I'm not going going lesser known fact number four is what we've been seeing here not only are there not specific units assigned to these different numbers but there's also unfortunately no standard either I've done videos before on the lack of standardization across power tools so for example with multi-tools the method of attachment of the blade is wildly different on all different types of tools I've got a spreadsheet that shows literally dozens of different types of attachments for using these oscillating multi-tools well this is no different unfortunately there's no consistency even with the numbering system at all for example we've got this one here that's going up to 11 on the DeWalt and the one right next to it goes up to 24 it's a huge disparity and that's basically the range that I'm seeing across all these different types of drills and what that means is you can never look at a number and then just assume that on that drill and every other drill you can use that same number as far as the clutch is concerned and the torque that you're going to get out of that it's going to vary every time so always test first start low start with those lower numbers and then work your way up until you get the resistance that you need our fifth lesser known fact is that we're moving less and less towards these mechanical clutches like the one we just saw taken apart and more towards electronic clutches like you'll find in these two drills here this is DeWalt DCd 999 and this is the Fest tool this is a much more expensive drill but check out how it handles the clutch so for example on the back heel right here that's where you'll find the clutch settings so I've got this set to one right now and let's drive a screw and see what happens all right so it stops right there gives me a little chime and lets me know that that's all it's going to do as we move it on to number two see if we have much of a difference in fact we'll skip to three here just to show you and there's something pretty interesting about these electronic ones wow that went way further okay way deep down that one again is about an e in underneath the surface so pretty aggressive on just level three especially considering that this is geared towards woodw workers people who need a little more precision and accuracy in their work and it's less of a you know all about power it's more about the Finesse so this one's not really that great with the Finesse in my opinion when it comes to the electronic clutch that's the thing that you're going to notice if you look this up and talk to people who are using these different types of drills for their daily work you'll find that most people really don't like the electronic clutch es they want the old school mechanical clutches because they just are more consistent they work better and they give you more control especially in those lower numbers so that's something to keep in mind when you're shopping for a drill you may see one with an electronic clutch and think cool that sounds new new tech that's great let's give it a try but you also might be pretty disappointed with it let's look at the same thing with our DeWalt DCd 999 I think that's what this one is yep and let's see what we get wow okay oh the the bit slipped into the Chuck but only after it got an eighth of an inch down past the surface again so not ideal now for those of you interested in having all of this at your fingertips as far as this information I've got a pretty cool drill feature guide that you can check out right here that I've produced so you can get this on my website and this gives you all five of the main features of the power drill to make it really easy to find out how to use each one of those I like to keep mine right over here by my Chargers and it just gives me at a quick glance everything I need to know about how to properly use my power drill did you know that 82% of people don't know all five features of their drill well you can check this video out right here to see if you're in the 82% or the 18% I'm Nils with learn to DIY thanks for watching

Channel: LRN2DIY

Views: 2,553,328

Keywords: diy, how-to, lrn2diy

Id: 2KLCPusFSpU

Length: 13min 41sec (821 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 27 2024