Three large icons (a hammer, a screw, and a drill bit) are easy to see, and this helps to quickly adjust the drill to the appropriate setting.
POWER VOLT REVIEWS MANUAL
The absence of a manual clutch ring at the front of the drill simplifies set up for drilling, driving, or hammer drilling. Turn a knob just above its battery to set the torque limit of the clutch to disengage the drivetrain and motor. Instead of a clutch ring, like a normal drill, it has electronic drive torque control. This Makita’s engineering is masterful in other ways. That’s helpful drilling wood, but even more important drilling steel, where it’s far more difficult to balance the variables of motor speed, bit diameter, and steel hardness and thickness.
POWER VOLT REVIEWS DRIVER
Balancing that with its electronic speed control that maintains motor speed under load put us in the driver seat (okay, we’ll stop here with the sports car analogies). Fortunately, the tool has great control, because all that power would be useless without being able to handle it properly. The GPH01D is first we’ve tried in Makita’s new 40-volt XGT series, power tools with 40-volt motors but batteries that are the same size as a large 18-volt. Okay, it didn’t bore the most holes in this test, but it did get to its number faster than anything else. Knots don’t stop it and barely slow it down. So long as you keep that trigger pulled, it will just churn through hole after hole. Pull its trigger (floor it, if you will), and you just burn through one hole after another until the battery is done. Using this drill, you feel like somebody just tossed you the keys to their Ferrari. If you need this much power tool muscle you just need to have some muscle of your own. But as to the tool’s weight, we don’t count that as a mark against it. The other large-battery tools were the DeWalt (5.4 pounds) and the Makita (5.2 pounds), and these were also pro-duty, intended for either serious do-it-yourselfers or contractors. The FX1171T, with a 5-Ah battery, was the heaviest of the drills (5.8 pounds). You should know that this is clearly a heavy-duty tool intended for people who need maximum power and run time. We can’t fully vouch for that particular feature, but we can say that we pushed this Flex very hard and noticed no kick back the drill will pause momentarily if you really lean into it (call it a reset). Also helping was the tool’s circuitry, which has an anti-kickback feature. The FX1171T blasted out its hole allotment, helped by its turbo mode setting that bumps up the top speed from 2,000 to 2,500 rpm.
POWER VOLT REVIEWS PROFESSIONAL
We’ve tried a batch of these tools (drills, saws, rotary hammers and grinders) and find them to be formidable competitors in the professional segment. And when we say “muscling in,” we’re not kidding. In the course of this test, we drilled 1,510 holes and drove 375 lag screws.įlex, short for Flex Elektrowerkzeuge, is a German power tool company muscling its way into the American market.
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After letting the battery and the drill cool off for 15 minutes, we continued hole drilling until the battery died. After that we went back to drilling holes with the spade bit until the tool’s thermal overload circuit prevented drilling. Each screw was ¼-inch diameter and two inches long.
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2 and Better”) using a sharp one-inch-wide Speedbor spade bit-the classic design without a lead screw, easily resharpened with a single-cut metal file. To test each tool, we made 25 holes through Douglas fir 2 x 8 (Grade: “No. This can help you finish a project a little quicker than you might be able to otherwise Does the drill come by itself, without a battery and a charger, or does it come with one or two batteries, a charger, and maybe a carrying case? For a bit more money, some drills have a rapid charger that quickly replenishes the battery to partial charge in minutes.
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This is a mechanism that imparts a percussion action to the drill as the bit rotates, helping a carbide-tip masonry bit to chip away material as it turns.įinally, look at the specs and package. If you plan to drill into masonry (brick, concrete, mortar, stone, pavers), you need a drill with a hammer option. If you plan a heavy construction project with the tool, this side handle will help you steady the drill with less fatigue and more control, should the tool bind in mid hole and kick back. Some cordless drills come with a side handle that you can attach and remove as needed.