Panasonic drill driver combo for £180

[cutting42]

Hi all

I have lurked with much interest for a few months and have got a lot out of what I have read so thank you all so far. I thought I would write a quick comment on my recent purchase as my first post.

I bought a Panasonic 12v cordless kit with a drill and an impact driver for $299 (£180) with free delivery.

Link

Now clearly you can see this is a US deal but I am lucky to have a friend who travels a lot between our two countries who took delivery and bought them over for me.

I had seen a couple of very positive reviews of Panasonic kit here and other places so I was really excited to take delivery from my friend yesterday. What can I say, these exquisite marvels of engineering completely blew me away, they run like a swiss watch and even "sound" cool as well. The power available from the 12v battery is incredible, goodness only knows what their 18V stuff is like - probably leaps buildings in a single bound etc etc. The impact driver is incredible, driving 4" screws into oak 4x4 with no hint of cam out or exess effort on my part - love the LED light as well.

With 3.5 amp hour batteries I am sure the life will be spectacular as well but have not had them long enough yet - probably way more than I need but for the cost of just the drill in the UK I am extremely pleased.

So if anyone out there can persuade a US friend to order and bring/ship over these I highly recommend this deal. I allowed me to get a quality of kit I could not have justified bought in this country.

Oh the other thing is the charger is 110VAC only which I suspected but I got a site transformer second hand on ebay for a tenner so no worries there.

Thanks for listening

Cheers

Gareth

Mod edit: url length reduced to remove scrolling

 

[jonny boy]

Gareth,

An exellent price and Panasonic drills are up at the top end of tools now.
I have got one question though. I buy a lot of tools from the U.S. and use them perfectly OK with a 110v transformer, but when I spoke to engineers from Dewalt I was told that it is quite alright to use the corded tools with the transformer but the cordless tools will give you problems when using the charges on the transformer. Something to do with the current being lowered from 240 then a charger lowering it again to 12, 14.4 or 18v.
Have you had any problems yet?

cheers,
jon.

 

[cutting42]

Hi Jon

Thanks for the comments.

No probs as yet and I don't expect any as the Panasonic charger is 50/60Hz rated and I had a peek inside and there is a very simple transformer dropping it to 24VAC from the 110.

There is no problem putting multiple transformers one after another as they do not interfere with each other. For example our mains is generated at a power station at one voltage, stepped up to 25,000VAC (to prevent losses crossing long distances - actually this is a simplification but it is close enough) and then stepped down to 240 or 415 3 phase at the local substation. So when we get it it has seen at least two voltage changes already.

The only factor which could catch us out is the frequency which if more sophisticated electronics are used (such as a high end charger like the Panasonic and DeWalt etc) and are not rated for 50Hz but the US's 60 Hz. This will probably not cause an immediate failure but could put internal voltages out as voltage change is also a function of Frequency.

Cheers

Gareth

 

[jonny boy]

Hi,

A bit too technical for me but are you saying that I am quite OK to buy the US cordless and plug their chargers into our site transformers? Are you 100% certain?

cheers,
jon.

 

[cutting42]

Hi Jon

If the charger is 50Hz rated as well as 60Hz ( it might not be - the Panasonic is) there should be no issues whatsoever as the charger will be seeing what it sees in the US. In fact it will probably be better as US voltage is notoriously variable between 90VAC and 130VAC and UK voltage is tighter regulated.

Having said that I am not in a position to contradict the DeWalt support people, it is their equipment after all. I am just working on electrical theory that transforming 240 down to 110 VAC does not do anything that makes it unuseable to a battery charger. If they say it will damage their equipment I would like to know in what way.

Sorry for the tech bit - ex Electronics engineer and don't mean this to sound like a classroom either.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Gareth

 

[jonny boy]

Thanks for the info Gareth, I might consider giving it a try. To be honest, I thought it should be OK as well.

cheers,
jon.

 

[Ian Dalziel]

Gareth,
These drills are very popular with the kitchen fitters at present.....I bought 2 off them and they are very good...solid chuck which seems to be on a ratchet and doesnt spit toolbits out.....nicely balanced and an all round good tool

The bad bit......the trigger switchs......if you use it for anything really tough...eg drilling lots of holes in metal or are using a large holecutter dont let the gun heatup too much as for some reason when it cools again the trigger wont work......i have went through 3 switchs so far but i still like the balance of the gun.....i only realised that when i give the gun some serious hard work it seems to fault at the trigger because i have done it twice on one gun and once on the other so its not confined to one faulty gun....this only happened on the 12volt guns i have

regards
Ian

 

[cutting42]

Hi Ian

Thanks for the tip. I am just a hobbyist so will probably not give it that much of a workout but worth bearing in mind.

Cheers

Gareth