In this post I’ll show you how Dewalt used to build select cordless drills in the USA.
10 years ago Dewalt held one of their last new tool media events inside a distribution center that was partially converted into a cordless power tool assembly facility.
On one side they were assembling 18V cordless power tools, and on the other select 20V Max brushless tools, such as their 3-speed premium hammer drill.
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In the middle, aside from the tool demonstrations setup for the media event, they had a couple of stations where brushless motors were being wound and balanced.
Part of the media event involved a “build your own Dewalt drill” interactive experience where we had a hand in assembling our own DCD995 20V Max XR brushless hammer drill.
Step 1: Grab Some Parts
None of the parts that went into the cordless drill were made on-site; all of the components and subassemblies were imported from US and overseas factories.
This is the brushless motor for the XR cordless hammer drill, and it arrived assembled like this.
This is the electronics package. All of the white space-filling plastic is potting, and it serves to protect the electronics and power components from physical shock and vibrations.
Step 2: Connect the Drill Electronics Together
The brushless motor and switch assembly are connected together.
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There’s a fixturing jig for that.
The power wires were soldered to the motor, and data communications are done via quick connector.
A single (sensor?) component received heat shrink tubing.
Step 3: Assemble the Drill Housing
Once the main internals have been assembled, it’s time to attach the shell.
The two halves of the cordless drill housing are made elsewhere and shipped together.
A plastic jig holds half of the drill housing in place, and the top piece travels with it on a lower shelf.
This is where the gear box, torque clutch, and drill chuck assembly is added in.
The motor and electronics assembly is then added.
If you look closely, you can see metal pins that have been added to the housing. These presumably help with alignment.
Here’s what everything should look like once everything is assembled. It’s important to keep track of wire positions, not only to make sure everything is where they should be, but to avoid anything getting pinched when the two sides of the drill housing are fastened together.
Everything settles into place.
Torque screwdrivers are used to fasten the two halves of the drill together. The gearbox is also secured to the housing, and here you can see how the assembly jig allows for proper positioning of the parts.
Finishing the drill assembly involved 4 screws placed in the side, 4 screws placed in the front through the gearbox assembly, and then 4 more screws placed in the side. All of the fasteners are installed in a specific order to ensure uniform tightness and consistency.
Step 4: Programming and Testing the Drills
This is where the assembled drills are programmed.
It’s a pretty neat contraption. The drills are programmed through the battery connection, which I never would have guessed.
Here’s the testing station where basic functionality and operated parameters are checked.
There are finger-detecting interlocks and pneumatically-activated drop-down plastic shields.
This station tests various functions, such as the drill’s speed, power draw, LED operation, and thermal shut-off thermistor.
It wasn’t clear to me whether every drill was tested at both stations, or if this station was for spot checks.
Step 5: Kitting and Labeling
After labels are applied, they’re checked by a computer for proper placement. This is also the point at which each drill is given a date code. There are also markings added to the inside of the battery connector housing to show that the drill has passed quality control testing.
Each drill in this line was then kitted with a side handle, charger, batteries, and carrying case, which received a matching serial number.
And that’s how the Dewalt 20V Max XR series cordless hammer drill was built in the USA.
This was all 10 years ago. I’m not sure if Dewalt still assembles any of their cordless power tools in the USA.
Still, I thought you’d enjoy a look at what they at least used to do. Seeing the process was a wonderful experience that I enjoying revisiting.
Bonus: Brushed Motor Drill Assembly
Dewalt was also assembling brushed motor cordless drills at the same facility.
I found it interesting that the drills went through a different assembly process.
Read Also: How Dewalt Brushless Drills are Built in the USA, and More from my Factory Tour
Big Richard
They had a Modern Marvels episode on power tools a few years ago that was very heavy on DeWalt – https://www.history.com/shows/modern-marvels/season-19/episode-4
Champs
This looks more difficult than any line work I did fresh out of high school, but I’m pretty sure the good American manufacturing jobs would be making the clockwork, not final assembly of imports.
Whether or not Americans are prepared to wind and balance motors, etc. is another question,
Stuart
Some of the components were said to be USA-sourced, but they didn’t share too many specifics. They got a little cagey when I asked about the electrical assemblies.
If I recall correctly, Dewalt brought some of the equipment over from Mexico, as well as personnel to set things up.
Motor winding is not done by hand. Balancing was a manned station.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjMlJOQYKfg
TonyT
I’m sure the motors are machine wound. Allied Motion at least used to hand wind motors for better performance but those are >$500 semi-custom servo motors.
Paul C.
Speaking from the largest motor rebuild shop in the Carolinas…
Uhh yeah, we have several winders that do it every day.
The big difference between a power tool motor and say a 25+ HP cast frame rebuildable motor is none of the servo motors are wound by hand except if we can’t locate an available spare. They are all machine wound. At that size even final assembly will be automated.
Since it’s all automated usually there is a huge advantage in the US or Europe. With automation in US/Eurooe when it breaks down you can get a tech or engineer on site in hours and parts same or maybe next day. In Asia typically it’s 24-36 hours for a tech and a couple days (or more) for parts. Down time is the killer even with readily available grey markets.
Pablo
People get pretty cranky about Made in USA labeling. I am happy this type of assembly happens hear in the US and want to purchase items where a significant amount of the product is US made. There are few cases where Made in one location means every material and item came from one spot. It does not bother me than some of the parts come from overseas and actually believe it can be a good thing. For example US made jackets with Japan made YKK zippers. US automobiles with Denso component or NGK spark plugs. Anything made from silk probably was made of fabric sourced from China. We don’t hold Made in Italy labeled goods accountable when they source their leather from non-Italian cows hides. Good on Dewalt for having US manufacturing. Bring more back.
Farmerguy
I thought DeWalt was the manufacturer that labeled some products “Assembled in USA with Global Materials” or something like that
Peter
Never seen a recent made in USA Dewalt cordless drill.
The last high end one I bought a few month ago was made in USA with ….
I like that the Made in USA requirements are pretty strict otherwise what is the point.
Hence all the Made/Assembled in the USA with … showing up which I am not sure even have requirements.
PW
I agree. At this point, so much of the supply chain is outside the US, bringing any portion of it back is a win. People who think its realistic to have 100% soup-to-nuts complex USA products are delusional.
We should foster domestic supply chains, but you have to pick a starting point and then expand it. That’s how countries industrialize.
This is some pretty trivial assembly, but it’s still better than no assembly, which is what you get with basically all other cordless power tools.
Ray
Delusional? I remember a time when you were delusional if you believed that the US was going to be anything but “a service economy.”
Stuart
If we simplify things, here’s what it boils down to:
People have an ideological preference for USA production, but a much greater preference for lower priced goods.
Stuart
Just to be clear, I am fairly certain things have changed, which is why the title and post are in the past-tense.
SBD announced the closure of a manufacturing facility in 2023, and it might have been this one. https://14cyiuhvcgv.com/stanley-black-decker-closing-facility-south-carolina-2024/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
In any case, what I saw there illustrates why cordless power tools are NOT made in the USA – there are too many components from too many places. How many companies make drill chucks in the USA? Motor controllers? Wires? LEDs? Any of the shown in my photos?
Hand tools are easier, as you can house all of the production steps in the same building. Milwaukee brings in USA-sourced steel and out goes USA-made pliers and screwdrivers. I don’t recall where they mold the plastic handles.
Modern cordless power tools involve a lot of parts and a lot of assembly steps.
Scott K
Tangental, but I believe Mystery Ranch (before Yeti bought and closed it) worked with YKK to manufacture some zippers in the US so their bags could be Berry compliant for military use.
The American Giant episode of “How I Built This” offers a really interesting look into American manufacturing.
Richard Miller
I’m a partner in Tuff Possum Gear and we use USA made YKK zippers. Our products are not listed as Berry compliant, but most of them could be If we went through the process.
Scott K
Nice stuff- I’ve always thought those cobra buckles are very cool
eddiesky
Think about pasta in or from Italy. Much of the wheat/flour is from Durum wheat…from the US. Matter of fact, some pasta in a local Italian deli, comes right from Italy and say, “Made from Durum Wheat – USA sourced”. Nothing says paying a premium like that and having it exported, manufactured, then imported back.
US won’t get manufacturing back like you think. Let other countries pollute their backyards or maybe you aren’t old enough to know of Love Canal, or why all former factory sites happen to be Superfund sites now. And where many cancer clusters were found. I want to know how China’s pollution is, as well as India…because both are the worst offenders globally… 4th place is …Poland.
Perhaps manufacturing on a micro-scale with better pollution controls would be welcome (think distributed manufacturing and assembly). But fools to think its coming back because no one wants their child to work for $3/hr, and no product that was $3 would be worth $20/hr in labor to make… its not realistic. And I recall when GM made shitty cars while Honda and Toyota were hit over 100K miles of reliability. Yet cars made by Audi/VW were junk because of Bosch… and ironically, union. Still, GM at one time made a great car brand, Saturn, and that was killed because owners kept them longer. Just like how Subaru almost died off as owners kept cars over 10 years because reliable. You don’t make money selling a product that lasts; you make money selling products that don’t last.
Kingsley
Made in China, Made in the USA, Made in Europe. Won’t matter soon, it won’t be made by a human, but a robot and it will be a robot using the tool too.
AI+Robotics are going to eliminate most jobs.
I’m a software developer and my job won’t exist either. My wife is a doctor, her job won’t exist.
These are bigger problems for society than where something is currently made.
S
That’s not the reality that most other industries are seeing. All reports have had robots ready to take over all our work since the 1960’s. Same with self driving cars. The main issue with both of those technologies has been humans shifting the goal posts.
We’re easily at a level that cars can drive themselves and do better at it than the majority of driving age people. But we’ve also shifted the goalposts to require that the vehicles can’t just be better than us at normal driving. They also need to deal with all the fringe cases far better than any human, to a 100% success rate. And so autonomous vehicles are stuck in a ‘purgatory’, where they’re very good, but arbitrarily not good enough ‘just yet’. Not no one can provide a specific tolerance that they become good enough for mainstream.
As far as manufacturing, robots are expensive. Terribly expensive. Talking to another industry guy at one point about it, robots cost roughly the same as paying 6 people to do a task. But many tasks take less than 6, usually closer to 2-4 people. So the discussion becomes ‘can tasks be combined?’ Many tasks can’t due to the tools or techniques required.
And there’s also a great deal of ‘human factor’ at play as well. To program a robot to sense odd vibrations in a rotating assembly, the vibrations must be quantified for the robot to determine good/bad units. But a human can be easily trained in minutes to the same understanding well within a minimal margin of defects.
To the same ‘human factor’, your wife likely has a job for a very long time. While you’re right-robots would be extremely effective and efficient at the job– understanding a crisis and deploying a suitable effect to counter it, a huge part of dealing with the public in a time of crisis is rarely the efficiency aspect, but the human compassion aspect.
For years, they’ve called for robots to take over the home construction industry. The reality is that it can never happen until all houses are built identically, which will take decades to do, and even then, many “same houses” have huge variances in dimensions and materials due to economic and local-environmental considerations. Added to that, it’s still very much a right of passage for wealthy to build a custom house, which can never be robot built ever due to the one-off custom nature.
Mike
^ Gobbledygook cope. Robot density has doubled in 7 years and replaces 1.6 jobs per unit.
Humans are unsuitable for repetitive tasks. Minimum wage in North America is too high for factory work. Training, benefits, facilities and retention all make it unprofitable for anything but automation and the instrumentation techs to run these sites.
Stuart
Source on 1.6 jobs lost per robot unit?
John
I’ll believe it when I see it. Automation has been about to eliminate all jobs for the last 50 years. It’s not that the technology doesn’t exist, it does. It just doesn’t work economically. Even in the US with it’s higher labor rates.
S
Quick question then, If robots are coming for all of us.
Mcdonalds has maintained a relatively limited menu for a few decades. The processes and procedures to create that menu are thoroughly documented–it’s part of what has made them one of the fastest fast food providers over that same time period. And McDonald’s also is well known to have enough operating capital to invest in technologies to reduce their overhead to boost profits.
Why has McDonald’s NOT fully implemented a per-site fully robotic food production within the last 30 years, despite robotic capability being easily accessible/capable over that same time period?
We could go over the same example with Chick-fil-A. Fundamentally, they are both financially well off companies, with a limited but well documented menu and production process, ideal for an automation takeover. Why do they insist on people doing 100% of the work?
ITCD
@S Part of that might be to do with initial startup costs. A lot of the McDonald’s are franchise locations. They don’t have the giant corporate checkbook to tap into, and McDonald’s has an interest in signing on new franchisees to get those sweet sweet licensing fees, to say nothing of what else they also get from being the sole source for things like uniforms.
What franchises save in the short term by not needing to blow millions on buying and setting up a fully-automatic location, they’ll end up losing in the long term by way of wages and whatever benefits they provide and payroll taxes. But that’s the trade. Higher operating costs over time, but in return a much lower initial financial barrier to entry, as well as being able to champion that they’ll bring a few dozen jobs to whichever town or neighborhood which might invite some benefits afforded by their local government (sometimes they’ll receive tax breaks etc for at least a period of time for this).
Plus this comment makes an assumption that the McDonald’s menu is entirely static, which it isn’t, they do temporary items or add and remove items over time. Snack wraps, new McCrispy tenders, the short-lived McBites, they just brought back steak bagels after a pretty long hiatus, Angus third-pounders are gone, etc. There also seems to be an assumption that it’s all done by humans all the time, but you can see a robot doing the job of a soda jerk at every drive-thru window which needs no manual input, their McCafe machines do most of the work regarding a lot of those menu options already to where it’s just a button-push away, etc. so automation has snuck in here and there anyway.
Eric
I work at an automotive component manufacturer in Michigan. We’ve been working to automate much of our processes, but obviously people are still needed in many parts of the process. PCB population/soldering is essentially 100% automated (a person loads bare circuit boards, reels of components, etc, and then unloads and packages the completed process). Our final assembly is mostly automated stations (driving screws, pressing together parts, testing), but people are still needed to move parts from place to place, load the components, and then do final inspections. Depending on the product, we might have people press buttons to test, clean and inspect parts, and place into packaging. Our automation push there is to minimize product handling from machine to machine with automated palletized processes. Some products are unique enough to where it doesn’t make sense to implement a robot to do a singular unique task.
Some other processes are essentially 100% automated, as people can’t readily handle hot/bent glass. Also, automated vision inspection stations can be much faster and orders of magnitude more accurate than a person.
We’ll never be 100% automated, but even in the current economic situation, we are doing capital improvements to increase automation as it makes sense in many situations. It’s not always about cost – a robot will always show up for work (on the day after the super bowl, in snowstorms, etc).
Robert
Data point on the 100%? success bar. A couple of years ago a car company tried to show off its autonomous self-driving car in LA. It couldn’t cope with the faded street lines and potholes in some places. A lot of finger pointing at the press conference afterwards. Realistically big cities won’t ever keep with with the street maintenance.
Peter
Even if it made completely made by robots and ai it is still important to me where it is made because it still matters to me which company/country my money goes to.
Nick
A little off topic. I come from a farm community in the southeast.
I thought dairy milking robots were going to save the small dairy farms. A study was done and it didn’t save any real amount of money over people, the only pluses were consistent work/less retraining and it was easier to find a temp person that would watch the robots than to milk cows, when you want to go on vacation. And they won’t sell you one unless you are 50 miles from a dealer and I don’t think there is a dealer in the whole state.
The new bale cotton pickers make a 3 person job into a 1 person job but the 1M dollar price tag is making some farms get out of cotton that don’t have the acreage to justify it.
Robert
Stuart, on step 4. If either test station was stated as or labeled “Factory Acceptance Test FAT” then that particular test station was for every drill produced.
Question on the earlier pictures. Are the gloves ESD gloves? They appear rather clumsy, though that could be an incorrect view.
Another Bob
I have that porter cable heat gun! Works great on the “marine grade” heat shrink cables (have internal mastic/glue) where the extra heat is welcome.
I remember buying a three speed 20 V drill. I was surprised when it said made in USA and the carrying bag came with had a prominent made in USA vinyl embl
Jared
That seems both lower-tech and higher-tech than I would have imagined. E.g. the fixturing jigs and hand assembly of electronic components into the housings seems like it would involve lots of hands-on time by an employee (though I’m sure they would get very fast at it). The automated electronic testing though, seems pretty slick.
If SBD did assemble in the USA, would they not still be subject to tariffs on each item they sourced elsewhere?
Stuart
If SBD continued to assemble drills in the USA, they would still have to pay applicable tariffs on any parts or assemblies that were imported into the USA.
Greg
Coincidentally enough, I was looking to buy another DCD796. It looks like those have been discontinued. From what I have seen, DeWalt drills are mostly assembled in Mexico now.
Stuart, any ideas on what newer drill is closest to the DCD796?
Big Richard
DCD805. It is the successor to the DCD796 as the gen III compact XR hammer drill. More compact, more power.
Stuart
As BigRichard said, the DCD805 is the newer model. There’s also the recently announced DCD806 (I’ll have more on that soon).
Greg
Thanks to both of you.
Big Richard
https://www.dewalt.com/product/dcd801qq2/20v-max-xr-brushless-cordless-12-hammer-drill-tool-only?tid=577301
Even more news, they are kitting the new 801/806 with 2x of the also new 4Ah PowerPack batteries. For $269 it is a good deal considering the 2pk of 4Ah PowerPack is $199 on its own.
MM
Sweet. I’m still shopping around for a compact drill, assuming the 801 is no bigger than the 800 it would be very attractive. And, if it’s available for a good price kitted with either 4ah Powerpacks or 3.5 Powerstacks that’s even better.
Big Richard
Same size as the 800. I see some S2 kits (2×3.5Ah PowerStack) for the international markets, but only the QQ2 kits (2x4Ah PowerPack) for the NA market at the moment.