Where to get 4.8-9.6v drill cheap

[Andy A.]

Originally Posted by DeepWater

As an interesting side note the motor mounts and dimensions in the HF drills I have looked at all have the same 25mm mounting holes as the KoP Fisher Price drills and the weak little Mabushi motor we got in the KoP this year. They are a ready made direct fit if you just pull the pinion off of the motor that comes with the drill and swap it on to the FP/Mabushi motors from the KoP. The gear reduction in the HF 47155 drill is 36:1 IIRC.

Even more interesting, those mounting holes are standered(ish) on hobby style R/C cars, which have lead to interesting results involving FP motors, and later a 14.4 volt drill motor. The odd thing is that at a quick glance, it's near impossible to distinguish a lot of these motors apart. All the cans are pretty much the same, although different enough that I think they only loosely conform to some standards. From what I've come to understand, Mabuchi starting classifying their motors based on their length, in mm's. So you started to have motor designations like 540, 550, etc. R/C car folks started to toss those designations around like engine displacements (even though the numbers have only vague indication on a motors power), and other companies started to market their motors to look and conform to the same sizes. Pretty quickly, a defacto standard arose, since a car could only mount so many different motor sizes, and no one wanted to be left out. After that, this 'standard' kind of bled through to the rest of the small motor world, showing up in FP motors and even drill motors.

So instead of everyone getting down to the table and coming up with a standard, it was more a case of everyone just copying someone else, and we all kind of benefit. At least, thats one explanation. Another is that a motor manufactor is doing the tough job of just winding the motor, and they all buy the can from one or two other manufactors. I guess you would need a plane ticket east and a good understanding of Chinese to get the full story.

Off topic threads are always more fun, no?

-Andy A.