When To Use an Impact Driver VS Drill: The ULTIMATE Guide

impact driver versus drill what's the real difference between these two and when should you use one over the other if you want to buy a drill or a driver you're pretty much always going to find it in a combination set why is that and what's the point of having both so let's first talk about the differences between the two the biggest difference is that the chuck on the drill spins in One Direction and doesn't have any special features inside of that it does have features on the drill itself which we'll get to in just a moment but the impact driver has a totally different driving mechanism than the drill itself on the drill you've only got two things that control the speed of this one is the trigger itself and most are variable speeds so they can go pretty slow like this or a full bore and then the second one is up here your gears you usually have one or two gears on here sometimes you'll have three or four and that impacts how fast it goes and how much torque is being applied the impact driver on the other hand typically just comes with the trigger it's variable speed again but there are no other functions with that while this Makita only uses the trigger to control the speed there are other brands out there like the Milwaukee for example here that has one two and three speed and impact settings as well as a self-tapping screw setting right there and it just stopped automatically works like a charm same thing with the Ridgid here you've got three different speeds plus self-tapping driving or automatic to switch between the two another huge difference here is that with a drill because of its three jaw Chuck I have the option to put in a half inch drill bit like this or even a 1 16 inch drill bit like this and anything in between with the impact driver however it does require that you use a quarter inch hex bit and that's the same sort of format that works on all of them and they really should have this little indentation right here and they also should have this thinner torsion Zone that has a little bit of flexibility to handle the impacts from the impact driver the drill has a clutch built into it which when you're in the Fastener mode like this allows you to go from minimal resistance on a number one here and this range will vary based on brand and model all the way up to 21 which is almost full resistance or you can just switch it over to drill mode and it will go full power all the time that means when you're working on something more delicate like this cup hinge here where you do not want to give full power onto this and strip out these holes you see that it stops because I have it set to one and it's not going to overdrive these screws for delicate work like this having a clutch comes in well clutch nobody all right on an impact driver it doesn't really know when to say when it's just going to keep going and it'll keep driving until it strips it out like that now that hole inside there is stripped and does me no good not every drill has this feature but many drills come with what's called Hammer Time wait that's not right Hammer mode Hammer mode this is for masonry if you're going to be drilling into something hard like concrete or cement or even rock or stone then while you're drilling with the masonry bit it almost acts like there's a hammer or a mallet pounding against the back of it going down in the same direction that you're pushing an impact driver like one of these guys unfortunately cannot do the same thing or can it no not really and now I've probably ruined a perfectly good bit another difference is that the drill has gears these gears like I mentioned before usually one through four but most of them have one and two the slower gears number one will be able to drive slower but with more torque and then if you switch to your number two these ones are really stubborn then it will drive faster and with less torque so depending on the material that you're driving into that could make a big difference this is great for drilling it's somewhat useful for driving but it's especially good if you're going to use anything that's going into a super hard material like metal you can put it in the first gear drive a little slower and have all the torque you need once again the impact driver can't do that and even the ones that do have variable speeds like the one two and three we saw before those basically are just limiters on how fast it will go and how many impacts per minute it will deliver not really on the torque adjustments another obvious difference between the two is size if we put the back ends of these together like this you can see that the drill is significantly longer and takes up a lot more space than the driver this can make a huge difference when you're working in confined spaces that's part of the reason that compact sets are becoming so popular if I take this Dewalt compact set and line it up here you can see it's a little bit shorter than this one but then if you look look at the impact driver wow this thing is the shortest yet very compact not much to it and because this is closer to the camera let me just show you this if we line it up like this you can see it's significantly shorter than even the Makita here you may be familiar with the term Kickback now kickback is the term used for when the bit that's in your driver or your drill binds in whatever material you're trying to drill into when that happens the drill is the thing that starts rotating rather than the bit and this can cause injuries to your wrist to your arms or to your shoulders and it is no fun now a lot of Manufacturers for drills are coming out with What's called the anti-kickback feature not very popular yet amongst drills but I'm hoping that's something we see more and more but the main reason that's important here is because the way the impact mechanism works on the driver means that you won't experience Kickback now all of that leads us up to This ship's wheel my grandpa Built This ship's wheel many years ago actually and he used to build the ships and boats that he and my grandma would live on which is super cool but what does that have to do with impact drivers well this will help me illustrate exactly what it does and that's why I brought out this beautiful little machine here this is the Walmart heart brand and I've cut a little window into here so you can see exactly what's happening when you're using an impact driver now for starters an impact driver seems at first very similar to a drill as far as how it works when you squeeze the trigger it's just going to go just like normal everything's just rotating 360 and that's that forward reverse same type of mechanism the difference is when there's resistance applied to the bit when an impact driver encounters some resistance think of it like having a ship's wheel locked onto the end of it and so what's happening is you're getting rotational impact happening to help drive that bit so it's basically going to act like a ship's wheel that as you're driving it in the forward Direction it's slamming slamming slamming against that driver mechanism and making it so that that bit can do exactly what it's meant to do which is drive that Fastener home this also works for loosening really stubborn Fasteners let's say you've got a bolt that's kind of rusted on those impacts what they're going to do is help you to Slam against that bolt and help it get released so that you can keep working this all works because we have three Parts first there's the hammer on top in between the hammer and the next part is a spring and that keeps the hammer away from the bottom part which is the Anvil as long as there's not too much resistance on the spring the whole Chuck will spin as it needs to when that spring is compressed due to resistance on the bit it's going to push that hammer into the Anvil causing it to hit over and over in the same direction that the bit is turning this is called rotational impact and it's what makes these things so powerful the difference in torque between these two because of that impact mechanism is absolutely massive on this drill for example the peak torque on this one is 530 inch pounds whereas on this one it's 1500 inch pounds nearly three times as much in this little body compared to this one as you can imagine that means the ultimate strength that this one has is in Fasteners it's putting in those big lag bolts it's those long deck screws it's different things like that that something like a drill can handle usually but in some case is just too much for it or it just doesn't have the proper speed and durability to do it because of this impact mechanism this battery we've got the same one a four amp hour battery in here and here this one is going to last a whole lot longer because of the efficiency of that mechanism than if you're trying to do the same thing with a drill we've gone through a lot of pros and cons as far as the differences between these two one thing to keep in mind is if you're going to use an impact driver I can almost guarantee you you've heard that sound if you haven't used one before this is what it sounds like it is loud it's obnoxious and it's pretty annoying fortunately there are some better options out there to try to reduce that sound but they will never be quite as quiet as a non-impact driver this tiny little tool has been my go-to ever since I got it I use this thing all the time and it's the first one I grab it's only a 12 volt battery here this is the Milwaukee fuel so that means it's a brushless tool and unlike the Makita here for example you can see it can come with a pretty compact battery it's very small in size but it does a great job but the big difference is while this is an impact driver this is the surge option The Surge basically means that it uses what's called a Pneumatic impact driver so it doesn't use the same type of mechanism and as a result it's significantly quieter than a traditional impact driver foreign that said as you can tell it's still louder than a regular drill just as a reminder I purchased every single one of these tools myself there are no tool companies that are giving me money but if you'd like to I wouldn't mind anyway everything here is just something I've bought because I want to test it out I don't care if you buy one or the other or buy nothing but I wanted you to have my personal experience with it while there are a lot of differences between these two there's a lot of similarities obviously they can both use bits to drill holes or to fasten they both use the same batteries interchangeably pretty much every time they both have a forward and a reverse and what some people don't know about is a lock mechanism right now I'm in forward here I'm switching it that way to put it in reverse and if you put it in the middle it's just going to lock up so you can't use the trigger at all that's a pretty Universal feature on pretty much every brand that I've seen today maybe most importantly though they both smell like power most people have a hard time remembering all of the different features and remembering when to use which So to that end I created a drill feature your guide I keep mine right over here by the battery charger and it's a quick way to easily know exactly what features you need to use and when to use them I'll put links to that in the description below or you can check out that little shopping bag in the corner and you can get directly to it from there now that we've covered the similarities and differences between these two that should help you to determine when to use which but generally speaking it's pretty much in the name if you want to drill a hole in something use a drill if you want to drive something in use a driver there are definite exceptions to this however let's cover a few of those anytime I'm drilling a hole that's not huge and it's not in a very hard material I'm going to go for this set right here I can even get a fair size bit like this Chuck it in and drill my holes the reason I do that is because my impact driver is typically faster to Chuck things in and it's a lighter tool it also fits in smaller spaces so if you just need to use an impact driver and want to take one tool on the job a lot of times this will do the job if you've got the right it's to go with it bear in mind these are impact rated drill bits these aren't just anything that fits but they're specifically meant to be used with impact drivers another application where I always reach for my impact driver to drill holes is with electrical work that's because if I want to drill a hole through studs I'll grab These Guys these are the Diablo bits and they have this little self-feeding tip here and these in combination with this drill do a pretty fantastic job I can get through any two by fours or even double stacked two by fours without a problem and this thing is so light and convenient to have on my hip as opposed to a full size or even a compact drill aside from those two applications that I'll typically use the impact driver for to drill holes all the other holes I'm going to be drilling are with the drill itself now I use those two applications a lot so that's why the impact driver comes up a lot for me when I'm drilling a hole but for anything that you see here forstner bits hole saws metal drilling Spade bits typically I'm going to use my regular drill for the that because it's going to do a better job it's going to give you more consistent rotation and it's going to give you more control Makita and other brands also make this converter here this is a traditional three jaw Chuck that you can fit inside your impact driver this can get you out of a bind if you don't have the right driver the right bits something like that or you've only got certain things that you can work with this makes it so that you can do pretty much everything that you can do with a drill in here but you're going to lose a lot of the functionality and you're going to have some limitations because it's an impact driver not a drill in all reality using both is the way to go if you had to choose one or the other then I think honestly the drill is going to be a little bit more compatible for all things but if you're doing any sort of driving having a driver is so much more convenient with all that torque that it provides now that said you can use both for most jobs a lot of times I'll drill a hole with something using the drill and then I'll use the impact driver to fasten whatever needs to be fastened into it so they are a great team and they work really well together I'm Nils with learn to DIY thanks for watching

Channel: LRN2DIY

Views: 1,261,523

Keywords: diy, how-to, lrn2diy

Id: 43cuU0lP6To

Length: 13min 27sec (807 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 14 2023