I had to do some work at my Father's today and I forgot my trusty 20v dewalt drill. In order to install a new receptacle on the outside of his house, I had to drill a pair of holes, so I went into his shed to borrow his.
In there I found battery powered tools from Dewalt, Black&Decker, Ryobi, and some chinese brand I had never heard of. It was a mess, trying to find a battery to fit his drill, then finding the charger to give it a quick charge. I realize he just buys whatever is on sale, but how can people live with so many different batteries, chargers, and the like?
I have two tools that use differing batteries from my 20v DeWalts. One in a Black&Decker Mouse. I like it better than any sander Dewalt has, and my Kobalt 40v mower. Those two exceptions do not leave my work space a total dumpster fire of mismatched chargers, cords, and batteries.
I am also guilty of doing the same with my hand tools. I tend to buy the same brand and style across the board to avoid mixing and matching. This is something my Father has also never done.
All my cordless tools for work are Milwaukee, but I have two different batteries since the little band saw uses the smaller style batteries. I have some old Porter Cable stuff at home that I'm using until the batteries don't hold a charge any more. When they are gone, I'll get some new Milwaukee cordless stuff for work and leave the old stuff in my shed.
I, um, haven't been so uniform.
My tire inflator is a Milwaukee.
My e-chainsaw is an Ego.
My impact gun and drill are Ingersoll Rand.
I'm buying into Milwaukee stuff now, I have the m18 for work and the wife has a a few m12 tools for her stuff.
We actually use Ryobi for a long time in the job because concrete work is hard on tools and Ryobi is cheap, but they aren't anywhere near the same class as Milwaukee and nowdays there isn't a huge difference in price
Mixing tool colors is Blasphemy!
I have 18v Fuel Milwaukee and 40v Ryobi.
I snapped a few years ago and got rid of all my missmatched crap.
Other than a M18 drill, all my tools are still standardized on NEMA 5-15, 78%-N2/21%-O2, or 95th-percentile human hand.
I have M18 home repair/woodwooking stuffs.
I have B&D 36v Blower & weed trimmer. If either die, I will replace with M18 also, but I acquired those long before any of the M18 stuff, and I dont think there is any decent B&D 36v overlap into the home repair/woodworking space.
I think a lot of the mix and match comes when you find the edge of an ecosystem. Milwaukee makes some pretty solid yard tools, but $1k for a mower? Most people will just go get a $400 mower instead. But the brands with decent mowers may have garbage drills. I don't think any tool covers all a homeowners usage - it would be nice to see brands under the same umbrella team up to get that coverage. Until then, 2 ecosystems can make sense and isn't too difficult to deal with.
Ive been slowly moving to Milwaukee infrastructure over the past several years. I got an impact last year, which is surprisingly powerful compared to my IR air impact.
This year I ended up demilitarizing my gas leaf blower after a protracted and unsuccessful battle to start it. I assume it was entertaining for my neighbor to watch.
preach (dudeist priest) said:
I snapped a few years ago and got rid of all my missmatched crap.
I did too. I went to buy a battery circular saw and got stuck in the "for $200 I can get a saw, but for $300 I can get this kit with a drill too..." that became "if I'm going to spend $300, I should just spend the $450 and get most of what I need"
I think I spent in the $700 range, came home, cleared the random stuff, organized it, done. That was a few years ago so in the long run, worth it for the convenience alone.
ProDarwin said:
I have M18 home repair/woodwooking stuffs.
I have B&D 36v Blower & weed trimmer. If either die, I will replace with M18 also, but I acquired those long before any of the M18 stuff, and I dont think there is any decent B&D 36v overlap into the home repair/woodworking space.
I think a lot of the mix and match comes when you find the edge of an ecosystem. Milwaukee makes some pretty solid yard tools, but $1k for a mower? Most people will just go get a $400 mower instead. But the brands with decent mowers may have garbage drills. I don't think any tool covers all a homeowners usage - it would be nice to see brands under the same umbrella team up to get that coverage. Until then, 2 ecosystems can make sense and isn't too difficult to deal with.
Milwaukee has a battery powered concrete saw even......there's no way that's gonna last long on one battery
The big thing now is battery operated lawn stuff. I have a battery operated blower and will never have a gas one again. I know a few people that have mowers and edgers and swear by them.
People think I'm old fashioned, but there can be a benefit to owning corded power tools.
I use Milwaukee M12 tools for just about everything at work and home. If I need more power than that, almost never, I pull out the corded tools.
The rest of the company trucks have Ridged 18V tools. They have an outstanding battery and tool warranty. Even with hard daily use, the guys get 2+ years out of a drill and the batteries just keep going.
For the lawn and garden tools, I use Craftsman 60V. They have been spectacular so far. If my gas lawn mower ever dies, I'll replace it with a Cub Cadet battery mower that uses the same Craftsman battery as the rest of my tools.
Adapters. They make quite a few. DeWalkee is a thing.
I've been thinking about standardizing. It wouldn't be a huge move for me since I don't have a lot of battery tools currently. I was looking at a Metabo impact and discovered the Cordless Alliance System. It's a shared battery platform, used by a number of manufacturers. Too bad most of them aren't in the US market and Metabo is the only big name in the bunch.
Anyone with any CAS experience?
I think my sawzall was the only tool of a different color. I almost gave the thing away recently and picked up a homogeneous unit. Then I found a battery adapter on amazon for like $10. It's not perfect and does mess with the color scheme but now I actually use it!
In reply to Mezzanine :
No experience, but that's pretty rad.
The adapter thing sounds good, but I feel like as soon as I started to depend on it, the tools would get "smart" enough to interrogate their batteries or vice versa. The first rule of DRM club is nothing works if the service provider doesn't get paid. Including if they are no longer in business or operating in that field. /end rant
My understanding is that in the electric scooter/moto arena, there's an agreement on shared architecture among several manufacturers, but that's differentiated by not really being a place where you're going to sell multiple batteries to one person and being able to swap them at a service station will increase adoption for everyone.
How different is having a standard for batteries from having a standard for bit drives or similar?
In any case, moving to pretty much all Milwaukee for auto tools and I have a mosty-complete set of Black & Decker yard tools; the red ones are probably more money for being better, but the black and orange ones are excellent bang for the buck for a fairly complete set of yard tools (mower's still ICE, and I don't think the batteries I've got would be up to that kind of work even paired; this mower's got enough life left that cordless mowers should be an easy pick next time).
Corded stuff works great for a lot of things. Same for air. I will never, however, have another corded electric mower. I mean, even apart from having too much yard now, that was a gigantor pain in the butt even when I was mowing three postage stamps.
Jesse Ransom said:
The adapter thing sounds good, but I feel like as soon as I started to depend on it, the tools would get "smart" enough to interrogate their batteries or vice versa. The first rule of DRM club is nothing works if the service provider doesn't get paid. Including if they are no longer in business or operating in that field. /end rant
This is an astute point. The amount of time before manufacturers chip their batteries is growing short. You can bet this adapter approach will be shut down like ink cartridges in the near future.
I have way too many different battery ecosystems. There is a rolling cart in my basement where all the chargers are stored, so at least they(and the batteries not being used) are all in the same place.
Let's see:
- Kobalt 40V - for the lawn tools
- Kobalt 24V - for my impact. Really like it, and have a work light I also use.
- Craftsman 19.2 - another GRMer gave me some tools in this format, I just had to grab some batteries and a charger. most likely to eventually be replaced.
- Ryobi 18V - mostly because they have the best work light I've ever used. Have some other minor tools along with that, though.
- Milwaukee M12 - just for the 3/8" ratchet.
Mezzanine said:
Jesse Ransom said:
The adapter thing sounds good, but I feel like as soon as I started to depend on it, the tools would get "smart" enough to interrogate their batteries or vice versa. The first rule of DRM club is nothing works if the service provider doesn't get paid. Including if they are no longer in business or operating in that field. /end rant
This is an astute point. The amount of time before manufacturers chip their batteries is growing short. You can bet this adapter approach will be shut down like ink cartridges in the near future.
If it makes you feel better, it'll be sold to you as a benefit, as in, "We're ensuring that only properly certified and calibrated batteries can be used on your device, ensuring that no damage will be caused by inferior products!"
I have zero battery powered tools that aren't Makita. I started with a multi-tool package when shopping for an impact wrench over 10 years ago, and I just keep buying more as new needs arise. I happened to line up the batteries and count the tools a couple weeks ago: 8 batteries, 3 chargers, 18 tools. So far I've been happy with the longevity, functionality, and variety of tools and batteries. I couldn't imagine having to deal with multiple systems.
Adapters are pretty easy to find on all the 3D printing .stl file dump websites. GrabCAD and Thingiverse and the like.
There could be enough consumer outrage over it that manufacturers would second guess DRM-ing their batteries.
In reply to the_machina :
This one: Workbench LED light. It is not so handy in tight spaces, but it is great for lighting up most of the underhood area of a car, or the interior, so I don't have to drag a corded trouble light in to it. Having the ability to fold it into a bunch of positions, and having one or both of the lights on at a time is really nice.
