Need some Milwaukee 18V batteries?

Milwaukee just gave us an insane deal. They have a triple bay charger with 2 18V batteries for under $100 right now. That's a great deal for 2 batteries, and with the multi-bay charger thrown in you've got yourself a bargain.

On a side note, Matt says it looks like they made the charger much smaller than they used to. The truth is, it's actually just not to scale with the batteries in the picture. That's what happens when we use PhotoShop to create product images of multiple items.

** Added ** This is the older charger that doesn't handle Li-Ion batteries. Rather than being stuck with them, Milwaukee is trying to boost battery sales by giving away the older chargers. Still, it's a great deal if you're using 18V Milwaukee cordless tools.

Convert your Ni-Cad Milwaukee Tools to Lithium-Ion

Milwaukee Tools just started offering a cool upgrade for existing customers with Ni-Cad tools. It's a kit (2 batteries and a charger) that allows you to power the older Ni-Cad tools with their newer Li-Ion batteries. For around 2 bills, that's not bad at all if you've got several tools already that you'd like to give the longer run-times.

What's even better is that they're offering a 5 year warranty on these batteries. with the first two years being exchange replacement.

Why would you want to do this? There are a couple of reasons. The biggest being that the weight of Li-Ion batteries is considerably less than Ni-Cad, which means your tool using experience will be much more pleasant. Li-Ion also have a longer runtime and more charges in their lifetime.

While this isn't a "Throw out your old working batteries" type of an upgrade, if you've got some aged cells and are looking to freshen your personal battery inventory, this appears to be a great way to go. If the other manufacturers offered this, I'd be all over those, too. It's hard for me to pass up new geek toys.

For more information, including current pricing, you can take a look here.

Makita 18V Lithium-Ion Drills - White vs. Blue

Today, we added the Makita BDF452HW 18V Lithium-Ion Drill to our website. The first thing you'll notice is that it's white. We nicknamed it "Shamu" when we first saw it. But what makes it different from the standard blue Makita BDF451 18V LXT Lithium-Ion drill?

Pricepoint

So the first thing that'll grab you is the price difference. Sure, $100 less is a big deal, but there's got to be a cause, right? I mean, $100 for blue dye in the plastic they use seems a bit high. But wait, looking at the specifications reveals the answer.

Batteries

The Watt Hours of the batteries differ considerably. On the BDF451, they use 3 AH batteries at 18V, which gives 54 Watt hours (AH * V). The BDF452HW has 1.5 AH batteries at 18V, which gives 27 Watt hours. So the runtime on the BDF451 is going to be twice that of the BDF452HW with the included batteries. What's being done here is that Makita, in trying to get to that $200ish pricepoint, has made smaller batteries for a "Value" line.

Charger

The charger included with the white model is a 15 minute charger which doesn't have a fan includes a fan, although it wasn't listed anywhere in the specs for the charger. The blue model includes the 45 minute optimum controller with temperature control via a fan to circulate air through the battery itself. This helps create a more even charge by having the cells in a more consistent state during charging.

Update: Makita will apparently be moving all of their tools to this charger, which will be 22 minutes on a 3AH battery and 15 on the 1.5AH.

Transmission

Also noted is that the BDF451HW uses a 2 speed transmission and the BDF452 uses a 3 speed. The difference in gearing makes for a 450 vs 560 rating for torque as well. Not that most people will notice the difference in torque, but that shows which markets each one is intended for.

Markets

The white model is intended for use in the high-end homeowner market, the DIY guys and low-end contractor market. The blue model is the flagship, with all the bells and whistles, designed for the professional that is using the cordless tools on a regular basis. They're both Makita quality, but they're just expanding their horizons a bit. The side handle, belt hook, and a few other minor differences make the BDF452 the choice for contractors, and most DIY and homeowner types won't even notice those are missing.

Good Call

I think Makita made a good call here going after the lower price market. This should make it a much easier choice between current 18V Ni-Cad and Li-Ion drills and moving up to Li-Ion. Kudos to Makita for being first to come out with a full featured Li-Ion cordless drill at Ni-Cad pricing.

Is that a V28 Engine under the hood? Milwaukee Li-Ion Chevy Bel-Air

The "Red Line" tour came to our place today. This included the Monster Garage built V28 powered car. Not only is this thing cool to look at, it's also pretty darn quick - getting up to almost 100 mph in the quarter mile. It runs from 384 of Milwaukee's V28 Li-Ion batteries and drew quite a bit of attention (yes, that's almost $50k and 900 lbs of "fuel" for those keeping score at home, not including the 210 V28 chargers). I'm sure that seems like a decent chunk of cash to most of us, but our rep stated that getting this car built cost them $275k, so it's not all that much in comparison.

Now that you know what powers this beast, allow me show you some of the details of this interesting rechargeable automobile.

Stock looking interior

As you can see, the inside is fairly "standard". Nothing overly impressive, other than it looks great for being a 1962 vehicle. Milwaukee had it done in their black and red color scheme with some white highlights, but it still looks pretty stock. It wasn't perfect, but it was also done pretty quickly for the show and wasn't what they were really concerned with. They did, after all, just want to make something that went fast down the 1/4 mile track, and 93 mph in 14.5 seconds isn't too bad for a power tool battery powered car.

Interesting accellerator

If you look really close (clicking on the image to zoom in a bit helps), the gas pedal is actually like those used on boats for trolling motors. I found that a bit amusing that they ended up using one of those, but it is understandable since they're running electric motors with it and not moving a lever to open up the carb letting more fuel and air in. I hadn't ever really thought about what they would use for an accellerator, which is probably why it stood out as much as it did to me. Either way, the feel was a bit different and I thought it was worth noting. The wire coming off of it will be re-run at some point, but for now it's functional.


Stock from the front

From the front, this car looks fairly stock as well. Nothing really screams "electric muscle car" from the outside. Come to think of it, electric muscle car is sort of an odd term. The other phrase I heard to describe this is "High-tech classic". That didn't really make much sense either. An electric car shouldn't be considered a classic if you ask me, regardless how old the body style is. But I would have to agree that it's sweet technology, as would most any classic car enthusiast. I'd still prefer a V8 over a V28, but that wouldn't help with Milwaukee's marketing like this does.

Sweet wheels

The wheels that they chose looked pretty nice as well. I like the Milwaukee logo sweeping across the fender, even if some of the paint had already decided to bubble and start peeling. But hey - it's a classic car body that's been on the road being shown at tool stores around the country, so you can't expect it to be perfect. It's still plenty shiny, and those low-profile tires look nice. I'm just glad I didn't have to mount them on the rims. That would have been a real pain in the back-end. I guess that's why I decided to be a geek and not a tire changer for a career.

Under the hood

Now that you've seen the outside, it's time to take a peek under the hood. Being an electric, it looks quite different. No gas lines, just electrical wires. No oil dipsticks, no air filters, just solenoids and fuses. But since it's a newer technology, it's pretty neat to look at. I think it's cool that a car can run that fast and be almost completely quiet, void of the typical rumble of exhaust pipes. Obviously, if it were a commercial vehicle it would have the wires hidden a bit more, but it's not so it was just made to be functional and semi-pretty to look at. I'll include a few more pictures below from under the hood, just because it's neat.




In this last "motor" picture, notice how fire was hand drawn coming from one of the monsters. Sort of a neat touch.


The Fuel

As you can see from the underside, there is no gas tank. Why would anyone need a gas tank on an electric car? Some of the straps for transportation are still draped over the rear end and sway bar (was that supposed to go there - the bar now looks bent), and you can see that the power cables aren't actually hooked up. At the top of the picture, you can see that the trunk was wood lined, which allowed for easy mounting of the battery receptacles. No, there weren't 384 batteries installed, but looking up it was easy to see where they all went.

Battery mounting system

To the left is the view from under the trunk. For whatever reason, they couldn't get the trunk to open, but from the underside all of the battery positions were visible. I was a little shocked to see rust on the underside of the trunk, but it is a '62 Bel-Air body with 43 year newer battery technology - and it shows in areas. The car is still sweet, but it isn't immaculate like I was expecting. In their defense, they did put it together in 4 days and have it scheduled to go in for a complete refinishing (body / interior) after this week. We're one of the last stops to get to see the Monster Garage's original work.

It was an interesting distration from our usual power tool workplace. Given a few more of these events, my blog won't even have to talk about power tools - just the publicity stunts that the manufacturers are trying. But until we get to that point, I'll be going back to Power Tool blogging for a while... except for an upcoming Milwaukee Chopper post.

Cheap Cordless Tool Shortcomings

I've seen lots of cordless power tools lately that are under $50. We even sell some. But what that makes many people wonder is what are the shortcomings? Are the more expensive tools really that much better?

Gears
Gears are one of the places many cheap tools are lacking. Many are plastic or nylon, making them lightweight and cheap but lacking durability. That's what I call disposable.

Batteries
Batteries can be made inexpensively by using lower ratings. The smaller cells typically have the ratings measured in mAh (milli-amp hours) instead of Ah (amp hours). The difference is a factor of 1000, so 800 mAh (like many inexpensive tools) is much less than a 1.7 Ah tool. The result is a battery that doesn't last as long on a charge.

Chargers
The main place that cheap cordless tools lack is in the charger. A decent charger, such as a Makita DC1804, will run around $50 by itself. Why is that? The most expensive part of a charger is the protection circuit. This protects the charger in the event of a bad cell in the battery. Cheap cordless tools don't have a protection circuit.

Who cares?
The answer is that anyone buying a tool that they expect to last longer than a battery should. Once a battery cell goes bad and it gets placed on that charger, the charging circuit gets literally fried. If you, as most people do, spend weeks to find a source to buy a replacement charger in this situation, it will get fried just as soon as you put your dead battery on the charger. At this point, you've got 2 fried chargers and a bad battery. You'll need to buy another charger and another battery now to get it working. This tends to lead to practicing 4 letter words as you throw things in the trash.

Why should you pay more?
Simply because it will cost less in the long run. The batteries will do more work per charge, the tool won't break as easily, and replacement parts are much easier to find. The "I'm not going to use it much" argument doesn't hold up, either. The less a battery is used, the more likely it'll get drained and sit around, which is one of the main causes of bad cells. Do yourself a favor and spend a little extra.