Drill vs. Impact Driver

Drill or driver. That's the question of the day. What we wanna talk about here is a cordless drill versus a cordless impact driver. Let's define what's going on here. This is a cordless drill. This is an impact driver. What happens with the impact driver is that when we're running this and it's putting in a screw it's gonna get to a point where as it feels resistance from the screw going in it starts to kind of bang on the driver. So let's say in your personal experience at some point you were working on a car or a tractor or a big heavy pipe and it got to where no matter what you did you couldn't turn that hard enough to get it to come loose. What you might've done was taken a hammer and hit the wrench. And that impact is trying to crack it loose. Same thing here, what that impact action is doing the brrrrr we hear is it's rotationally advancing that to give it that to help drive the fastener in. Now don't confuse that with a hammer drill. On a hammer drill that impact is at the back of the shaft and it's helping drive it forward the drill bit. And in that case, what we're doing most likely is we're trying to drill holes in concrete and the impact is this way, like a little jackhammer to help the drill go through the concrete. This is a rotational impact to help the fastener go in. So here's the question, which of these do I need? Both. A couple of different things going on here. Commonly with drills, we get a chuck. What's the benefit to that? In the chuck, I can put any of the myriad round shank drill bits or drivers or anything I own can go into that three jaw chuck and get tightened in place. Downside, when it comes to a driving operation maybe you've experienced this, even though we get our driver in there, nice and tight sometimes, especially when we're under a lot of torque the chuck might come loose. Different dealio on impact drivers in this case the collar comes back or out. I'm sorry, the collar comes out. The driver slips in, let go of the collar. It grabs onto that hexagonal shape. The relief in there keeps that from falling out. So even when we're under a lot of stress from using that that driver can not fall out of there. Where does that put us in the world to drill bits? Well, what that means is then your drill bits need to look like this because if we're gonna drill holes with this our drill bits have to have that same hexagonal shape on them. These can be found at home centers, but do I wanna go back and replace every round drill bit I own so that it has a hexagonal shape on it? Maybe not. Where we really benefit from these is when we're doing heavy duty driving. A couple of examples, hanging cabinets on a wall. Putting cleats on a wall the cabinets are gonna hang on. Anytime that we're driving a bigger fastener the impact driver really pays off. Most commonly impact drivers do not have a clutch on them like drills do. Part of the reason for this is compactness. By not having a clutch, we can keep the body of this smaller, allowing it to get into tighter spots. Both of these offer the ability to light your work. Impact driver as soon as I squeeze the trigger I'm throwing some light out there. All honesty, first time I saw the light on a cordless tool I thought that seems a little weird until the next time I had to drive a screw inside a cabinet that was already installed. On our cordless drill here, we have a similar benefit. There's a light right there under the chuck that's throwing light on our work. Let's do a little drive and experiment and see what happens here. I've got a couple of three inch screws. We've got 12 old batteries in each of these tools freshly charged. A pine two by four. This is my drill. I'm just getting it started there. And here we go. You can count in your head if you want. Now pretty fast. One of the things you probably heard there was chunk chunk. That was my Phillips tip slipping out of its engagement there a little bit. Here comes my impact driver. I'm gonna give it the same benefit, get it started. Count in your head. Prior to this, prior to shooting this, we did time these. The impact driver put that screw in just a little bit faster than the regular drill did. It does make it a whole lot easier, the impact action to keep the tip engaged with the screw. Why is that a big deal? If this slips off and penetrates your work you're gonna leave a mark in your cabinet or whatever else it is you're driving into that you don't want. So here's where we're at. Am I going to pull out an impact driver to drive number six half inch screws and to face frame hinges? Probably not, because I wanna have a delicate touch to make sure I don't break those screws off. Am I going to drive heavy duty three inch screws through a clique, through drywall into a stud with this? Not if I can use this. 'Cause this is gonna make it a lot easier on me and a lot faster to get the screw in place. So they both have a place in your shop. They both have distinct advantages and it's really worth having one of each. If you can fit it into your checkbook because they're very handy to have. They both do great work. They're both great additions to a shop environment.