IIRC, that might be because their quality & reputation took a dip for a while. They were, after all, a Sears brand, and Sears got run into the ground by some blood-sucking leadership.
That said, they used to have a great reputation, and were sold to Black & Decker in 2017, who seem to be handling the line up much, much better.
B&D makes tools for people who hang pictures… I’ve never seen a b&d tool on a job site or even handle the bare minimum for anything more than little house projects. DeWalt is like the lowest grade stuff that most guys use in construction, but even those are starting to have QC issues and durability drops.
Old craftsman or new? Because if new you might not be Craftsman very long. Old craftsman tools will outlive us all and if you can find them at a garage sale, buy em.
For what i use them for my craftsman electric cordless set does the job. Thats what I want in a tool. They have done the job for 5 years now no problems.
While I do have a couple of DeWalt drills, I’ve been a member of the House of Ryobi for 20+ years. Ryobi was the first to really push the idea of “one battery fits all” ecosystem with their 18V ONE batteries.
My Wife bought me a tool set for Christmas one year and I have never looked back. 20 years later I’m still using those tools and Ryobi still supports them. A new Lithium battery battery still works in my old tools. The “pro tools” do not take that track.
As a Semi pro, I run Metabo HPT for power tools and beat the hell out of them and get free batteries. Never had a tool or battery die in several years.
For groundskeeping I go with worx. They’re great but aftermarket batteries suck ass.
Any plug in tools that aren’t antiques are rigid, their warranty is nuts, and their mitre saw has the widest range of any I’ve ever used. Plus free service and parts for life.
My coworker runs Milwaukee, lots of variety, but he’s had two drills and three batteries die in 3 years of basic use, so I’m not sure if I trust them wholly. The packout is nice, but there are better options out there for portable tool chests now, like flex and toughbuilt.
I know a few pros who switched to flex tools and swear by them, but they’re too fresh to market to know for sure, although the company has been around forever supposedly.
I’ve somehow killed half the Hitachi/MetaboHPT batteries I’ve bought, and two of three chargers to boot. If anything else in my house made a habit of mysteriously dying for no reason I’d blame the power company, but as it stands it’s just the power tools, and I am by no means a heavy user. Maybe my garage just gets too hot? I dunno.
I’ve noticed a difference between the Lowe’s/retailer Metabo tools and the stuff they have at Menards and Amazon. Menards especially seems to only stock discontinued models. I’ve been consistently surprised at how hardy mine have been. Maybe I just got lucky, or you unlucky.
Some of the bigger tools, like vacuums or table saw do. Unfortunately the little tools are too cluttered with miscellaneous Bluetooth circuits to fit both AC and DC motors or more reasonably AC to DC converters.
I think the main issue for the companies is that power adapters have a nearly unlimited lifespan in comparison to lithium batteries, so it would be less profitable for them to sell you a direct attached power adapter than a bunch of batteries and a charger where you have to keep crawling back to them when the batteries inevitably give out in three years.
It would be trivial to design a blank battery attachment with a DC jack, and just have it hooked up to what is essentially a beefed up laptop charger. There are plenty of applications where a corded tool is perfectly adequate and even superior to cordless tools, so the fact that none of the manufacturers have it as an option hints that it was a business decision as opposed to merely an oversight.
I imagine the same as every single laptop in existence. A big brick that sits on the floor and a very long cord.
Why couldn’t that work?
Other tools are way more power hungry than a drill. Someone gave me a m12 Vacuum as a gift and it can’t run for more than 15 minutes on battery which makes it extremely limited. Inside a customer’s home that is all I need but at home it’d be great to run it as a dust collection for a table saw.
I wonder how easy it is to DIY something like that. Like would it be as easy as picking up an off the shelf power supply with the right voltage and current and 3D printing an attachment that fits into the battery slot with a DC jack on the side (or even just gutting a dead battery pack and taking out the batteries and control electronics, soldering a DC jack straight onto the main contacts, and drilling a hole for it to poke through)? Or do modern power tools actually need to authenticate the battery with some kind of tool DRM?
Yes, Festool do one for their sanders. A battery tool is usually more expensive and less powerful than a mains powered tool though, so I’m not sure what the advantage of this would be.
Makita still going strong after 15yrs of use. They were the best at the time and still works amazing today with backwards compatibility batteries. My 15yrs old driver can use a brand new battery that a 2023 model uses.
Drill a 1/2" hole through 4" thick stainless without a hiccup on a single battery. Then tap the hole on the same battery. Impressive power and reliable
What I’m more intrigued by is that OP didn’t say that they use any kind of guide or frame to hold the power drill. Try drilling 10cm by hand straight enough that it makes sense to tap the hole.
If we’re gonna talk about tools, I gotta shout out porter cable for making an absolute tank of a circular saw. Finally went cordless Bosch, but that porter cable has a good 20 years or so of heavy use and it’s still kicking.
It’s surprisingly hard (at least for me, perhaps I’m looking wrong :p) to find general comparisons comparing the brands for overall usefulness. You’ll find stuff comparing their drills, or something specific, but not everything overall. Which seems much more important, as (as has been mentioned in these comments) the batteries really lock you into one brand.
Be the change you want to see in the world. Start up a spreadsheet or database and start looking to see if there’s a way for others to add to it and view it, like a Google Sheets or a non-Google equivalent.
Can’t really compare cordless drills to circular saws, that’s apples and oranges. If you’re going to buy into a tool line (the only real reason is to avoid having to purchase multiple chargers and batteries, those are expensive) then pick the one that has the best tool(s) that you use the most often.
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