What are Cordless Drills and What are they Used for?

Cordless drill is one of the most useful power tools you could buy, you can buy for your home. It’s a drill that is powered by a battery so unlike a typical cord drill which limits your range of motion, a cordless drill can basically be used on the road. As long its properly charged, you can be in a remote work site, far away from electricity and nearly off grid and you will be fine.

What is a Cordless Drill Used for?

what is a cordless drill
So Many Options!

As cordless drills evolve, their battery lives actually have become quite impressive. Back in the day, cordless drills were very heavy because of the inefficient batteries that they were equipped with and they really didn’t last all that long. Maybe in the middle of a job and you are drilling one plank after another or handling one piece after another and while in the middle of a very productive stretch your drill gives out. It starts to slow down and before you know it, it was no longer able to do the job.

Thankfully those days are over because the modern cordless drill is not only light which enables you to handle more work and extend your range of motion, it is also very powerful so there has been quite a marked improvement in both range, energy efficiency and overall usage, especially when it comes to torque which is the turning power of the cordless drill. It is no surprise that the modern cordless drill can actually accommodate a wide range of bits since 

Sutton bits require more torque and power traditionally those bits were pretty much off limits to cordless drills that you basically had to get a unit that is plugged into the wall or plugged into an extension cord to take care your business, not anymore. Even if you are handling a very tough piece of work, a cordless drill can do the job for you.

What to Look for in Buying Cordless Drills

The first thing that you need to consider is the design of the drill because it have a special angle or is it an all around drill. Now, keep in mind that certain drilling jobs require a certain angle so you may want to buy a specialized drill for that.

Portability

how to choose a cordless drillThe next factor you should seriously consider involves how often you will be away from a ready source of an electricity. This is a big deal because a lot of homeowners don’t have a generator and a lot of them don’t have an industrial power bank that they can readily plug into which would power a wide range of appliances and equipment.

What do you do in that situation? Well, thankfully, if you are a typical homeowner in the United States working in middle of America, you probably go into being within a comfortable distance from an outlet this is especially true if you live in the city or the suburbs.

On the other hand, if you see yourself working at remote work sites where electricity may be sporadic or you are just looking for a piece of equipment that would enable you to work on a completely off grid basis, you may want to consider cordless drills that have very long battery life. (Related – Read more about the Best Drill bits for metal)

Here is the secret with maintaining long battery life. Make sure that the battery is completely or almost tapped out before you charge it. There is such a thing as rechargeable battery called memory. To put simply, if you were to pump a lot of electricity into a battery when it is halfway drained, the battery will sooner or later remember that charging point, so, eventually your battery will start to perform like it’s always half-empty you see the problem with this. 

You can go a long way in extending the practical and operational life of your cordless drill’s batteries like waiting until they are almost tapped out before deciding to charge now. Sometimes is good to brush up on general battery safety as well. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, isn’t that playing it close? What if I completely run out of juice? Or if I’m not able to do that because of my schedule.

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Now, the good news is you can charge two cordless drill battery units so you have the one unit that is installed in your cordless drill so when you are doing a job out in the boondocks somewhere or out in the sticks, your drill will deliver the results that you are looking for.

If sort of unforeseen event happens or you get stuck there longer than you anticipate it, you would always have that backup battery pack so this way, if you’re in the middle of a job and you are taking care of drilling all these pieces, you don’t necessarily have to stop, you don’t have to break your flow, you can quickly switch from one battery pack to the next so you can keep going. Most manufacturers of cordless drills offer extra battery packs that you can charge.

Versatility

Another key factor that you should look at is how versatile the best cordless drill model is. Can it accommodate all types of drill bits? Can it accommodate the parts that are not even drill bits? So, the more flexible it is and the more pieces it can fit, the more you should consider it because the name of the game when it comes to power drills and cordless drills is flexibility because you want to be able to handle a challenge the moment it presents itself.

You don’t want to feel like you’re stuck because you are going to have to go around to your neighborhood hardware store to pick up the right drill bit so you can get the right job done. You want to be able to take care of the job right then and there.