Drills for ~$100

[Monochron]

We are looking to buy two good quality drills, one cordless and one corded (probably hammerdrill) for around or under $100 each. The last drill we bought looked good on paper and the reviews were good, but we soon had trouble using it to get through metal on a full charge. We have had issues with Black and Deckers in the past (that we only spent about $40 on), but are their ~$100 models more trustworthy?

Also, does anyone have recommendations for what I should be looking for to ensure a drill is up the the task. With corded drills, should I go for a 10 Amp over a 6 Amp, or is there little benefit? Is there appreciable difference between the "20V MAX" and the regular 18V cordless drills? Is a Lithuim Ion battery something to prioritize or just a nice bonus? etc.

A couple people on our team are of the opinions that DeWalts are great, but that you can get the same quality from a Rigid or Makita for less money. Is this accurate or are Dewalt's worth the extra cost?

Amazon links to reliable drills would be appreciated, but any advice or suggestions are welcome too. Thanks.

[Bruceb]

spend good money on a MAKITA for your cordless and never look back.
You can easily get a good corded drill for under $100.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwaukee...1z141khZ25ecod
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Makita-18...z0u18xZ1z140i3

[JamesCH95]

It's a $200 for this kit, but you get two drivers, does that count? I have an earlier version of this kit from HD.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/RIDGID-X4...2?N=5yc1vZca8n

Lifetime parts/battery warranty, super-fast battery recharge (kept up with my hanging drywall), enough torque to push a stepper bit through 1/4in aluminum several times over (have also done 1/4 bronze and sheet steel), the impact driver has around 70ft-lb of torque, both drivers are quite light and easy to handle. Highly recommended after owning my kit for over two years of home improvement projects, use in my garage (cars, wood work, metal work), and FRC duty.

My prior cordless drill was a DeWalt XRP, which also served me well over several years of FRC and home use. I do prefer the Rigid kit though, especially the impact driver.

[mastachyra]

I am a fan of Milwaukee power tools. Here's what I have and love.

I own this drill personally and I love it. It's plenty powerful.

I found this kit for about $250 last year. I bought it for my team. It was a great deal. You'll need to keep an eye out for sales.

I found this set for $100 on black friday. It came with 3 batteries. I bought it for myself.

Finally, I bought this circular saw over the summer to help build a deck.

With Milwaukee tools, I'm confident I won't need to purchase new tools for a LONG time.

[Steven Smith]

I have nothing but good reviews for this Dewalt drill.

It runs every year from between $99 to $169... and right now it is at a low of $99.

It has plenty of power to handle the toughest jobs... recently used it to punch a 2.5" hole with a holesaw into a 1.5" thick wood butcher block countertop. I've used it for mudmixers in sheetrock work... as well as driving an 18" long 1/2" ship bit through two railroad ties.

The battery life isn't superb... maybe 100 3" screws in a row? But it will quick charge back up in 30 minutes... and it comes with two batteries.

I bought one for myself 4 years ago I still use, and I got two for my team last year. I can't say the other brands aren't great.. they might be, but for a nice LIGHT drill that has more power than any FRC team would need, you can't go wrong with this one.

Steven

[BenDSterling]

I honestly love both Dewalt and Makita tools.
For a corded drill you defently don't need a hammer drill for metal. I would recommend something like this. http://www.amazon.com/DEWALT-DWD110K...s=corded+drill
For a cordless drill I personly own this one and I love it. http://www.amazon.com/Makita-XFD01WS...keywords=drill

[MrBasse]

+1 for Milwaukee tools. We have this one we got from Fastenal. Our local store gave us a sizeable discount as well to make it more affordable.

I have Dewalts at home and I love them, but I think I would trade them for the Milwaukee set we have in the shop if I could. Plenty of power, fast battery charge and batteries seem to last forever. Plus they have a gauge that tells you approximate charge levels too.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by BenSterling

I honestly love both Dewalt and Makita tools.
For a corded drill you defently don't need a hammer drill for metal.

Yeah, the majority of the time we can just go through metal with a regular drill but there are rare occasions where having a team with a hammer drill nearby saved us. We had a shaft snap off and get bound in a special coupler at an off season competition, and the only way we were able to get it out was to drill out the shaft piece stuck in there. As far as I can tell, the hammer drill made the process only take 15 minutes instead of much more.


Also, I updated the OP with a couple more questions. I am thinking that there are so many different drills out there that maybe asking for general guidelines for what to look for in a drill might be more helpful.

[Steven Smith]

I only have an older 18V battery Dewalt at the school and the 20V MAX.

At one point, DeWalt released a 36V MAX version that was based around the A123 system's advanced LiIon battery. I actually used 10 of these as part of a Formula SAE Hybrid car ~5 years ago. At the time, the big thing was they had an extremely high discharge and recharge capacity versus their amp-hour ratings (~10C as I recall).

I haven't researched it fully, but I think the 20V MAX is essentially the same battery technology. I know A123 went bankrupt a couple years back... but I get the impression that the nice thing about the 20V MAX is it is very powerful for the size or alternatively very light for the power... and that it might be a similar battery technology.

It all depends on how you use it whether it is worth the money. For all the home projects where I was screwing drywall into a ceiling, or any project where I'm working overhead with a drill... every pound I cut down was very much appreciated. For general robot or shop work, the little extra weight from an 18V might be fine. If you are using the drill how it is supposed to be used and not abusing it.. the 18V might be fine.

As I said, I can't say that Dewalt is better than Milwaukee/Makita/Ridgid etc... just that for $99... I sure love mine

[ToddF]

Nowdays, any major manufacturer (there are about 5) is going to make good powerful drills that hold a charge for a reasonable amount of time. To differentiate, you need to look at the failure modes which are most likely to effect you.

For me, in my personal shop, I take very good care of my tools. Over the years, I have ended up with several cordless drills which were physically perfectly fine except the batteries no longer would hold a charge. What good is a wonderful high quality drill with a dead battery which costs 75% of the cost of a new drill to replace? I did research and found that the only major manufacturer with a lifetime guarantee on batteries is Rigid. What that means is that if a battery dies for any reason, you get a free replacement.

Now, for our robotics team, the most common failure mode of our cordless drills is for a drill to be sitting on a workbench and someone to bump it off onto the floor. The drill flips in the air and lands on the chuck, bending the shaft that the chuck threads onto. At this point, I think we have four cordless drills (all dewalt) and at least three of them have wobbly chucks from bent arbor shafts. For students who are struggling to develop their hand drilling skills anyway, a wobbly drill is just worthless. To date, I haven't identified a suitable solution to this problem. There are three approaches I'm thinking of taking:
1) Buy a drill with a larger, stronger arbor shaft. (Probably would also mean the drill is bigger and heavier. Not a good thing.)
2) Buy a lighter drill with less of a probability of bending the shaft when it falls off a table.
3) Buy one of the newer "pistol style" drills which, since they have no wide battery base, don't sit upright on the table. and are less likely to land on the chuck if knocked off. These also tend to be smaller, lighter and cheaper, all plusses for students with smaller than adult man hands.

And now that I've thought it through, I think we'll be buying a couple of the Rigid pistol style drills in the near future.

[Bob Steele]

If you jump through all of the hoops with Rigid you have a chance of getting a replacement battery. You have to submit your registration and include the original receipt and then MAKE SURE that they received everything. I know of 2 individuals who thought they were ok and did everything only to find out that later when they requested service that the company told them they had received the registration but not the receipt so the warranty was void.
Apparently it is your responsibility as a Rigid owner to make sure that they have received all of the paperwork and not theirs to email or write you back if you haven't. In both cases, the individuals HAD sent in their receipts...but somehow they had been lost on the other end.

Buyer beware... just follow through will all of the requests and then you can get service.... Home Depot will handle it many times in the store if the paperwork has been taken care of.

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

If you jump through all of the hoops with Rigid you have a chance of getting a replacement battery. You have to submit your registration and include the original receipt and then MAKE SURE that they received everything. I know of 2 individuals who thought they were ok and did everything only to find out that later when they requested service that the company told them they had received the registration but not the receipt so the warranty was void.
Apparently it is your responsibility as a Rigid owner to make sure that they have received all of the paperwork and not theirs to email or write you back if you haven't. In both cases, the individuals HAD sent in their receipts...but somehow they had been lost on the other end.

Buyer beware... just follow through will all of the requests and then you can get service.... Home Depot will handle it many times in the store if the paperwork has been taken care of.

I had no trouble registering my Rigid tools. Sent in the form, receipt, and UPC; I then got a confirmation email a week or so later. No fuss whatsoever. Rigid does note that you should get such a confirmation email when everything is in, so ignoring the lack of such a confirmation is a bad plan!

[Bob Steele]

That is good to hear. That was not the case for these individuals. The confirmation was not available when they bought their units.

Glad to hear it works for you.

good luck!

[ToddF]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

You have to submit your registration and include the original receipt and then MAKE SURE that they received everything.

About two years ago Ridgid moved to a purely online registration process. It is no longer necessary to send in paperwork. You just enter the serial numbers of the tools and the barcode on your receipt.

Originally Posted by Monochron

Could you explain how to identify the "good powerful drills that hold a charge for a reasonable amount of time" from a given manufacturers lesser options?

If you really want to get into the weeds, you can probably track down a woodworking magazine with an exhaustive comparison review article comparing the performance of all the major brands. Yes, there are tiny differences in performance and weight between the various models. But, for a typical robotics team, it doesn't matter that one drill will drive 575 screws on a charge, and another one does 525.

Construction professionals will hotly debate between the top brands (Milwaukee, Makita, Dewalt, Bosch, Porter Cable). The next tier down is Hitachi, Ridgid, Ryobi, Craftsman. Black and Decker and Skil are the bottom of the barrel. Like any other consumer product, most people will be happy, and a few will end up with lemons. Personally, I've just decided to go with Ridgid because they stand behind their products with a lifetime warranty. I figure I'll go with the company that puts their money where their mouth is. If any of the others decides to do likewise, I'll consider their stuff, too. I just got tired of throwing perfectly good drills in the dumpster because their expensive batteries died.

We bought two of these sets yesterday. Registered them this morning.

[MrBasse]

Originally Posted by ToddF

...Construction professionals will hotly debate between the top brands (Milwaukee, Makita, Dewalt, Bosch, Porter Cable). The next tier down is Hitachi, Ridgid, Ryobi, Craftsman. Black and Decker and Skil are the bottom of the barrel. Like any other consumer product, most people will be happy, and a few will end up with lemons...

Do you really put Hitachi and Rigid on the same level as Ryobi? If so, why don't you buy Ryobi's? They used to cost a quarter of the others you listed, but for what used to be very good reasons. I haven't tried them since they switched to being neon green and upped their prices. They do look a lot fancier than their old dark blue counterparts, but are they really on the same level as Hitachi?