Drill or Hammer Drill

7 years ago

I'm in the market to replace my cordless drill and have had good experiences with Makita, so I'm looking at their brushless XFD07Z drill, but I see that their XPH07Z brushless hammerdrill is essentially the same price and weight. I don't especially need a hammer drill. I have a decent corded Milwaukee hammer drill and I really don't do much drilling into masonry, so I'd just buy the regular drill if there was a difference in price or weight, which there usually has been when I've gone drill shopping. Of course the hammer drill is switchable and works as a regular drill with basically the same other features as the regular drill.

So, if I get the option of having a hammer drill with no cord at no additional cost, that's nice. But I wonder if it's really as good as the regular drill at the tasks I would use it for 99% of the time drilling wood (95%) and metal (4% or so). The torque is the same and I think the RPM ranges are also. However, I would guess that, because of the added complexity of the drive and chuck, there's probably more wobble/run out in the hammer drill than the standard drill. I've seen some suggestion online that is usually the case with hammer drills. Nothing I do is really precision work, but wobble is a pain when I drill metal (I have no drill press, nor space to store one).

Any thoughts? Should I get the extra drill features for free, or is there likely to a real difference in the basic drilling feature?

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Comments (4)

ssewalk1
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
I currently have a Mikita Lithium battery combo set . One drill is conventional variable speed unit while the other has the adjustable torque , hammer function . The down side of the Hammer drill is battery life is noticabily decreased during hammer drill mode usage . It would seem that the Hammer function uses a little more amps lol . Since you already have a Hammer drill I would suggest you go with what you actually need ! I have not noticed any runout with the hammer drill in conventional drill mode to answer your actual question.
dcp123
Original Author
7 years ago
Thanks a lot for the input. I was shopping for the conventiional drill and only started thinking about the hammer drill when I saw it was actually cheaper, so I checked the weight, expecting that to give me a reason to go with the conventional drill, but there was no significant weight difference and I was having trouble justifying not getting the more versatile product.

As you may have noticed, I tend to overthink this sort of decision. Worse, I'm also prone to buyer's remorse.

I wish i could come up with a solid disadvantage of the hammer drill, it does cost more now, but he difference is only$2.
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ssewalk1
6 years ago
Sounds like a Sales Pitch to me ! lol.
dcp123
Original Author
6 years ago
Olivia, You were probably right that I should have gotten the regular version, but I got the hammer drill a bit over a year ago. I did actually use it on masonry once when I was fixing something at my mom's house and bringing the corded hammer drill as well as the cordless drill would have been a hassle and just binging the corded one was totally impractical given where I was going to work. That was nice, but being convenient once a year probably doesn't make up for the increased runout I'm sure I get with the hammer drill.

Festool was not in the running. Most of my cordless tools are Makita, but I already have two other brands of cordless tool batteries and chargers. I'm not signing up for a fourth. If I could just figure out what I did with my Makita impact driver, I'd probably get rid of my Milwaukee charger.

I'm a fan of Makita's cordless tools. I think the offer fast charging and a good quality tool for the price, but as for the particular drill I bought? Do NOT buy it. Makita sells it as a high torque reversible drill/driver, so it should have a gearbox spec'ed to handle a fair amount of torque in either direction. It does not. The chuck doesn't grip bits terribly well without a good hard twist to tighten it. If you're too gentle and maybe you're drilling metal with a thin bit, the bit will slip, but if you give the keyless chuck a strong twist clockwise (torque is the same direction as when the drill is running counterclockwise), you will get the joy of hearing the inadequate gearbox strip. Mine was like this out of the box and while I took a long time to get around to taking it to the Makita Factory Service Center the box got weaker and weaker as a result of all the stripping.

As an aside, the Makita-run shop is great: great guys, all needed parts in stock, and extremely quick service, but an hour from my house and not in the same direction as work.

The shop swapped out my gearbox and chuck same-day, but when I picked it up, I gave the chuck a twist and heard the same stripping. They told me I was twisting it too hard and ruining a good gearbox by twisting it "backwards" and showed they they could set a bit with no stripping and drill holes in a chunk of wood with no slipping. Now, exactly which direction is backwards on a reversible drill? That's right neither one. If you sell it as reversible with 1090 in-lbs of torque, I should be able to apply something close to 1090 in-lbs of torque to back out a lag bolt if I want to. But, since I know the damn thing strips at a lot less torque than that when tightening onto bits, I know it can't do that.

Unless you have a precisely calibrated torque wrench where most of us have a wrist, this drill will either let bits spin loose or destroy its own gearbox. If you just want to carefully tighten the chuck on 1/4" bits and drill soft wood, this drill will work fine, so will one at 1/4 the price.

Makita sells some nice tools, but this one is a dog. I'll keep on using it as carefully as I casn until the occasional stripping totally destroys the gearbox. I'd swap out the chuck with a keyed one (no torque on the gearbox at all), but that really does compromise the convenience of a cordless drill.

Does anybody seriously think that I'm applying more than 100 in-lbs of torque twisting a keyless chuck that's less than an inch from the axis of the drill?

Drill or Hammer Drill

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ssewalk1

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Drill or Hammer Drill

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