Game-Changing Cordless Drill Driver Preview!

We caught glimpse of a game-changing cordless drill driver design that we absolutely had to share with you! News of the drill is not exactly supposed to be made public yet, but its features are so innovative and its styling so kick-ass that we’ll risk a few angry phone calls to bring you this preview.

(This is one of the tools we were talking about in yesterday’s venting about keeping new tool secrets.)

Still, since we’d like to limit the number of angry voice-mails we are bound to receive, we have decided to at least keep mum as to which major tool manufacturer plans to release the new driver. We’re told that the project is so secretive that the brands’ marketing and PR contacts haven’t even been briefed about it yet.

We’ve been told that this project has been codenamed “Batman” internally, with the vision and goal to create a super-compact drill-driver with advanced features that could be carried on-person. It is hoped that, eventually, several other cordless tools could be scaled down without there being a sacrifice in features or power.

One question thus far – what color will the utility power belt be? That’s right, there’s a utility belt in the plans as well, AND it charges your tools as you work. Our source preferred not to discuss the kinks that “set this project back a few years.”

Heck, we’re already seeing 12V hammer drills and a 12V compact band saw that can be operated with one hand. Smaller and lighter is the way of the feature. But what sets this drill/driver apart from other minified tools is its impressive high-tech features.

1. Body Composition and Brushless Motor

The body of the cordless drill/driver is made from high-strength plastic and magnesium, making it incredibly lightweight and durable. This might change in the final version, but it sounds pretty reasonable.

The drill will feature a brushless motor, but we are not privy to additional details. If/once we find out more, we will update this post accordingly.

2. Optical Trigger Switch

The drill features a true optical trigger that senses flesh or any normal glove material.

The idea of an optical trigger switch is not exactly new, but current designs, most notably Hitachi’s new brushless drill, still require a traditional trigger to toggle an internal optical switch.

3. Secondary Trigger Safety

When you toss the drill into your bag or holster with a bit still in the chuck, you don’t want it turning on by itself. There are three optical sensors in the handle that must be covered with your hand before the trigger switch can be used to operate the drill. One sensor is at the back of the handle, and there are two more on opposite sides that allow for right- or left-handed operation.

4. 1/4″ Hex Chuck

As we discussed previously, we’re not exactly in-love with hex-chucked drills. But at least we can pop in 1/4″ hex-to-drill chuck adapter. We know that a traditional 3/8″drill chuck model is in the pipeline for later release, but until then we consider this drill/driver more of a driver than a drill.

5. Auto-Adjusted Speed Control and Max-Torque Settings

There’s a whole lot of technical and marketing mumbo jumbo used to describe this feature, but we’ll cut to the bottom-line. A microcontroller chip is used to control both speed control and maximum torque settings, automatically. A special sensor (see feature 6, below) aids in determining the proper settings.

Electronic torque controls are built into Dewalt’s new brushless impact driver, and Milwaukee’s FUEL brushless impact driver. However, the technology that allows for such control also limits the maximum speed (RPM) that can be achieved at a given torque setting.

The tech behind the speed and max-torque of this new drill/driver, on the other hand, can control the speed and torque settings independently.

6. Worklight Plus Speed and Torque Control Aid

A white LED worklight illuminates low-light work areas. Right next to it are two LEDs (or lasers??), spaced about 1/2″ apart, that pulse a red beam several times a second. What this does is measure the thickness of a drill bit, if you’re drilling a hole, or fastener you are driving in. This ensures that the tool is always operating within 10% of the recommended speed.

Without a mechanical or physical trigger with pressure-sensitive contacts, or optical trigger with position encoder, this is the only way to provide variable speed control.

The maximum-torque setting is also set based on the thickness of whatever fastener you are driving in. Taking into account different fastener materials, the drill starts with the lowest max-torque. It measures the distance between fastener-head and the surface of the workpiece, and increases the torque setting if the max is reached before a fastener is driven flush.

Once the fastener is driven flush, the drill/driver turns off. This can be easily overridden as necessary.

7. Reverse Switch

Here is another optical switch. Touch or cover it once to engage “forward” mode, twice to engage “reverse” mode, and a third time to lock the drill/driver. The LED changes from green to red, and then off.

To save battery life, the drill goes into sleep mode if locked for more than 30-minutes, but it can be woken up by inserting a drill or screwdriver bit into the chuck.

8. Inductively Charged Battery

The drill/driver is powered by a 12V (10.8V actual) lithium ion battery that is inductively charged. Capacity is 800 mAh, which seems to be a bit on the low side, but runtime is claimed to be 90-minutes under continuous average load. It takes 15-minutes to fully charge the battery via the included charger. We assume this was done to reduce the upfront cost of the package.

We searched around a bit more and found that one distributor already put up a preorder page:

Availability & Price

We’re told that these neat little drivers will start shipping ~12-months from now, around April 1st, 2013. MSRP is estimated to be $1 more than you can afford.

Update: it looks like one distributor already put up a preorder page!

Buy Now

Image Source: David Miller, a very talented industrial designer. You can see more of his work at Dave Miller Design.