Milwaukee Tool has announced a new M18 compact cordless 1-ton chain hoist.
The new Milwaukee cordless chain hoist, model 2983, can lift up to 2,204 pounds (1 metric ton) at 20′ lift height.
It was developed in partnership with Columbus McKinnon, a company that specialties include hoists and lifting equipment.
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The Milwaukee M18 chain hoist is said to deliver enhanced productivity, safety, and efficiency when compared to both manual and electric competitors.
It was designed to provide effortless installations, less down time, and improves mobility in application.
Features include an integrated variable speed lift and lower button.
The hoist has an inverted design, giving users easier access for battery changes. it can be used for “inverted and standard” installs.
The chain hoist comes with a remote control with 60-foot range.
An indicator light on the remote notifies users when the 12Ah battery is at 25% remaining charge, giving operators the opportunity to lower the load and swap out the battery at a more convenient time, rather then when a load is lifted and in midair.
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Milwaukee included One-Key integration, which allows for hoist inspection interval tracking and record storage via the One-Key app.
The hoist weighs 46 lbs (tool-only), allowing for “one man carry.”
- 2,204 lb load rating
- 20-foot lift height
- Remote with 60-foot range
- Weighs 46 lbs (tool-only)
- 17.8″ length x 11.5″ height x 9.2″ width
- Hook mount
It’s kitted with a Packout rolling tool box for easier transportation, the wireless remote, (2) 12Ah batteries, and a Rapid Charger.
Price: $3999 for the kit (2983-22HD)
ETA: July 2024
Discussion
There are a couple of of “firsts” here.
In addition to this being Milwaukee’s first M18 battery-powered lifting solution, the new chain hoist is the first product I know of where the company openly acknowledged a development partner. I wonder if we’ll start to see more of this.
Looking online, Milwaukee offers a range of manual and electric chain hoists, but this is their first cordless model. I have never seen their electric chain hoists before, but I also have never looked for them.
With respect to the price, $3999 seems to be in the same ballpark as other brands’ comparably spec’ed electric chain hoists.
Charles
I’ll pull the chain before I drop four grand on that crap!
IronWood
My thoughts too. $4000 for a plastic body hoist I have to keep changing batteries in?? And I’m not sure at all about that inverted design that puts everything in the way by the hook.
Casey
We hang inverted motors by the hundreds in entertainment rigging. Climb and pull a few dozen hoists body up by hand with a rope and you will get it. It works just fine. I’ve hung thousands of points for hundreds of concerts like this.
Stuart
I usually understand the pushback on price, but electric hoists can cost just as much, and also involve the hassle of dealing with an extension cord.
Ross
The statement Corded electric models Can cost just as much may be true, but that is not a selling point for this device as many devices from reputable brands are much less in the same weight range if that’s what you are looking to compare. However, Buyers overlook two huge factors on chain hoists and winches. Duty cycle and hoist speed. At 18volts of power I highly doubt this unit will be usable for a contractor making multiple uses out of this per day, too slow and it will likely overheat on long lifts or multiple lifts in a short duration . It’s also too expensive for casual consumers. I don’t see this one being sold to anyone but fanboys, but that may be their goal.
Stuart
So your speculations are that it will be slow, overheat in short duration, and might have been designed for fanboys. Based on what?
eddie sky
Most I’ve seen for a decent 220V hoist in the 2200lb range is $1900.
So this price is double. But read on…
See, this is the problem I have with all the companies moving to cordless versus gas/other: the greenium premium to recoup R&D along with “its greener! Pay more!” .
Although in Milwaukee’s defense, I bought, through a Toolguyd link, the M18 mid-torque 1/2″ and yesterday, rotated all my SUV tires and not even dropped a bar on the 5Ah battery! That meant no compressor to fire up, hose to worry about tangling/snagging, and cycling of compressor between sets (5HP/30Gal) and then bleed out compressor/drain.
While its still “expensive”, I guess the convenience of not needing a 220V line and electrician to install…
Casey
It’s not about being green, it’s about convenience.
Imaging being somewhere there’s no power and being able to use one of these. Say, in the middle of the woods at a new site that’s undeveloped
You could bridle this between trees…. Just saying
IronWood
I’m not surprised they name-dropped their development partner. People in rigging and lifting jobs tend to want to know what they’re using. Nobody is going to spend $4000 on a 1-ton hoist made by a no-name import OEM . As a rigger I’m going to know and trust CM, while a Milwaukee plastic hoist on its own looks distinctly non-industrial grade.
Stuart
That’s a great point!
Roberto
Is the 1 metric ton lift rating before or after applying a safety factor?
James
Knowing CM, it’s after. I don’t recall the safety factor of the top of my head, but we test them to lift 125% of their rated weight, and the safety sketch should skip at 225% of the rating so it doesn’t destroy whatever it’s mounted to.
Casey
CM is 5:1 safety factor
Stuart
They haven’t published a safety factor (yet).
My assumption would be that this is after the safety factor, which tends to be the norm for lifting and rigging equipment. Breaking strengths are often explicitly described as such.
Peter Fox
Most rigging equipment such as chain and slings are at least 5:1 safety factor. I don’t remember what it is for hoists but would not be surprised if it was similar. Those requirements are all very clearly specified in the relevant industry standards.
Not that it will lift that much more than its rated load but overhead lifting and rigging equipment is very conservatively rated to minimize the risk of failure.
Casey
The break in the hoist is a 5:1 also
John
What’s the application for something like this? A portable winch/come along would be interesting, but for fixed applications you’d typically have power. And for field use like steelwork usually level chain hoists work fine since you spend more time setting up than you do cranking it and this would be too heavy for that anyway.
Elliot K
I’ve used electric hoists on a I beam across the top of a lift shaft we were using it to lift 9-12m long beams to be bolted and welded in place to provide a strong internal structure for a 12 story building that was being demolished (while retaining the brick facade).
I’ve used electric hoists to assemble a 3 story twisting steel staircase in a skyscraper, made from 19mm/3/4″ steel.
Could probably use this for the former but not latter, as battery changes would be a disaster.
The more I think about it the more I think it would compete with long pulls on chain blocks, not so much with electric hoists where the battery would be inaccessible.
Jerry
I’m with you. A cordless winch at a reasonable price I think would sell well.
Peter Fox
I would bet there are plenty of professional riggers who would love this. Much of that industry works out of job boxes going from customer to customer to handle installing moving or removing heavy or awkward machinery and equipment that the customer either can’t or doesn’t want to move themselves.
Not having to figure out how you are going to get power in an odd location or tight space would be a big selling point. And While it is heavier than a manually operated chain hoist of the same capacity it would be a hell of a lot easier and faster to use that one. This is quite obviously not intended as a replacement for a permanently installed electric hoist that is attached to a small gantry or jib style crane.
The option to use it inverted is quite interesting. It make a ton of sense for portable/temporary rigging use. Having the hoist lift itself up rather than having to lift it manually in to position to use it but also having the option to use it conventionally is really useful.
The most common use for inverted electric chain hoist is in the entertainment industry specifically for temporary rigging at live shows and concerts. CM makes a version of their lodestar series specifically for this type of use. it even has an all black paint job rather than the usual orange one so it blends in and isn’t easily seen. I wonder if Milwaukee plans on making an all black version. Event rigging would be a pretty good use case for something like this as they don’t really do any more cycling up or down than they have to. Get the chain hooked up, any maybe a few cycle up and down before it is time to tear it down and move on to the next show.
Eric
Yeah, on the entertainment side we consider the way this is set up to be normal, and call the hanging it the other way inverted. No one wants to haul up 100+lbs of motor and chain 50+ feet into the air unless they absolutely have to. It’s much easier to just pull the chain up on your rope and let the motor pull itself up. Especially on bigger shows that have dozens of motors.
As far as this thing getting used in the entertainment industry I could see it being used as a stacking motor so they can get it going right away without waiting for power to be tied in to the shows distros, or have to wait for them to be done stacking before they can shut them down and pack them up. Or maybe for small portable stages to fly a bands banner.
The 20ft chain would be way to short for must use cases. Though that could probably be swapped out for a longer one. It has some bigger issues I see right off the bat though. How long is that battery really going to last? Would it tolerate being on “standby” for 12 hours? A week? I just don’t see many people in this industry being willing to take that chance, especially since 95% of the time we’re running other cables to whatever is hanging off of them anyways. The wireless control is also a big issue. Do you have to have the specific control unit for each motor? What happens when it gets lost? When some local hand walks away with it at the end of the night? Will one control multiple motors? Will it do it at the same time? How will it react with hundreds or thousands of phones in the crowd start filling up those frequencies? Will it still work? Could someone’s phone connect to it and move it? And maybe the most important one is how well will it stand up to getting beaten on by stagehands that are notoriously hard on gear. This thing is half the weight of a standard CM 1 ton motor, that really makes me question its durability over years and years of hard use. There are just way to many questions right now for me to even consider using this for anything that’s show critical.
Rich
Excellent use case. The mfg should have a unit in your hands for testing. For me in the garage I would use it to pull motors out of a car truck. I’d do $1100 with the cover. I have the 18v battery so tool only. lol.
IronWood
That’s why I love this site. People from industries I’ve never worked in chime in with interesting info. I’d never heard of using a hoist motor down until yesterday, but makes perfect sense for what you’re doing. I think you’re right on the money with your concerns for this unit. Seems like a flawed solution looking for a problem.
Nate
Being able to control it from a phone, which is less likely to get lost, would be huge. Enroll a dozen units into a single app, name them as you place them at the venue, and share that config among all the riggers’ phones.
Bluetooth is made to be ultra low power, so if they did the design right, there should be no issue leaving it on standby for months. Those 18v packs are huge compared to the battery that keeps an earbud on standby for days. Did they do the design with that in mind, though?
Interesting ideas for a “black edition” stage-targeted version, though!
Wayne R.
Don’t you think there might be a safety issue with phone control? Someone hacking into it/them, especially if they’re on long-term standby?
Robert
In the entertainment industry
The not locating power is a big thing
This would pay for itself in 4-5 uses of not needing to get a 3 phase generator to erect and hang a portable pa tower
The only thing that this is missing is separate radio channels so I can run 4 – 8 of them simultaneously
Gordon
I did notice that in most of the promo photos they appear to have easy access to power. And they don’t seem to be doing anything that a chain hoist can’t do.
Nate
And that’s perfectly fine. I use cordless tools all the time in a shop where there’s easy access to power, because for most jobs, it’s simply more convenient to slap a battery pack onto the tool than to handle a cord.
Not only do I not have to care where the outlets are, there’s also one less thing to snag, wrangle, or trip over.
That alone is often plenty of justification to go cordless, even when a corded version might be slightly cheaper, or more powerful, or run longer. In my experience, those advantages are so inconsequential that I don’t even own corded versions of many tools anymore.
Furthermore, this one has a wireless remote, which is simply awesome. If I was the guy in the manlift, and had the middle of the pipe lifted by the hoist some distance away, I could control the bucket and the hoist in parallel, bring it into position, fine-tweak the alignment, and fasten it as a single worker. Doing that with a corded hoist, and a corded pendant control, would be a lot more hassle and might justify a second person just to handle the hoist.
If having less cord to wrangle means a worker is more productive, that begins to justify itself in a heck of a hurry, regardless of outlet availability.
Grokew
Maybe useful for HVAC? Lifting small condenser units to the roofs of 2 story houses. But then, where are you going to hook/anchor it up?
Rich
LOL insane. I was in, now I’m out. Red is dead buh-bye. I had a price in mind to buy that. Now? they out. I won’t even bother with them anymore.
Eric
Honestly it’s cheaper than I expected. I 1 ton CM chain motor goes for a similar price. And this includes about $500 worth of batteries, charger, and packout box.
Rich
whats the life expectancy, parts replacement, service things, etc say in 3 years? I don’t have the figures but project “squat”? what happens when the remote goes dookie?
don’t confuse me with the other Rich’s here. They know better than I. I’m just a home shop enthusiast.
cheers
Eric
I’ve seen plenty of CM motors that are 20+ years old. They are built like tanks and handle tons of use and abuse. Parts are still pretty available. They should be serviced at least annually. And they offer classes so companies can send their employee’s to learn how and do it in house. We’ll just have to wait and see how long Milwaukee offers parts for theirs.
BigTimeTommy
Wild price, no clue who would be buying a plastic hoist at an outrageous price. Most of the companies I know who could use this aren’t going to spend $4k to save their underpaid immigrant laborers effort.
S
For everyone that keeps saying “it’s a plastic hoist”
What’s your comparison?
And even barring the whole cordless aspect, what hoists are you using that cost significantly less?
IronWood
CM Valustar NH, 1-ton, aluminum body, 20 ft chain, made in USA, $4097 at McMaster. 120V plug in, but I’d trust the CM over the Milwaukee any day. And for another $800 you can get the Lodestar, which is kind of the industry standard.
Or my personal favorite, a bomb-proof Harrington or CM chain fall for under $500…
Goodie
Love the chain fall or LodeStar options. Go big or go bomb-proof.
Matt
For those in general contracting or hobbyists, $4k is insane. This isn’t meant for you. But there’s industries where it costs several times that per minute to have equipment down. For example, this is perfect for swinging an oil pump out on a locomotive that’s blocking a main line. Cramped space, remote location, limited personnel….. I expect to see these in the wild quickly.
Tom
once it is part hoisted and the battery runs out, it looks like you have to get to the top of the load to swap the battery.
AlexK
I almost spit out my coffee when I saw the price, but I feel that way everytime I see the cost of commercial equipment. Then, I realize they’re not intended for me.
When I first opened my Juice Bar/Cafe, I used a $30 Oster blender for smoothies. Two years later, I spent 14 times that for a Vitamix. My store closed after 7 years in 2007. Twenty years later, after making many thousands of drinks, it works as good as day one.
I love hearing about the different trades and uses on this site. Milwaukee must do their homework and found a need for this and must have done all the testing on the plastic casing as well as the innards. Would they and CM risk their reputations putting their name on this if it didn’t hold up? I would have thought aluminum(aluminium?) or stainless would be the way to go, but at 4 grand, I doubt they skimped on the casing, for a few dollar savings.
MM
As others have said this is pricey, but honestly I don’t feel that surprised. Electric chain hoists are expensive, generally speaking. Milwaukee’s specialized commercial tools are also very expensive: their pipeline inspection tools cost up to $10k depending on the exact model. The big Force Logic crimpers are 4-5k. Underground cable cutter is over $4k, strut shear is $3700, the 6t class crimpers are $2500, pipe threader and 750MCM cable cutters around $2k, etc. So the combination of the two–an electric overhead lifting tool from Milwaukee–for $4k? Doesn’t surprise me one bit.
But as handy as this would be, it’s well outside of my budget, I’m making do just fine with a couple chainfalls, and I also have two sets of 4:1 arborist’s blocks and a few hundred feet of static line & progress capture devices aka “rope grabs” so I’m fairly well covered for lifting and dragging things.
I’m personally more interested in a smaller version, something like a cordless come-a-long. The capacity isn’t super important but being compact and relatively inexpensive is. It doesn’t have to be rated for overhead lifting either, that would reduce the cost greatly. I was about to describe it as “something like the Warn Pullzall, but cordless” or “like the Warn Drill Winch but with an integral motor & battery”…but I now see that this already exists: there is now a cordless Pullzall model. 1000 lbs, $450 on Amazon. I can also see that there is now a 750lb capacity Drill Winch out, that’s only $250 with 40 feet of synthetic line of if you trust the alphabet soup brands you can get one for half that. I think those kinds of tools would be much more useful for the average contractor or DIYer.
Gordon
Most are surprised at the price being so expensive. But I’m actually wondering how they got it that cheap with those ratings.
Milwaukee’s own 1-ton electric hoist with 10ft lift is over$3k. Other companies seem to all be in the $2k-$3k range for basic 1-ton hoists. And those often don’t have wireless remotes standard.
This one comes with 2 batteries and a packout which is a pretty solid $700 of accessories. That puts the “bare tool” cost of the winch right around $3300.
Now the two incredibly big specs not mentioned are the Line speed and how may feet the battery can pull on a charge. I’m guessing they have to gear this wayyyy down to have the torque for a 18v battery to lift what other machines do with 120v. And with that, how often do you need a ladder or man lift to swap the batteries out.
While I understand the desire to not deal with cords (why I have a cordless miter saw) I have also come to realize that I sometimes still need to plug stuff in and I’m still running extension cords.
Eric
Looks like a CM 1 tons pulls at most 12 amps at 120v. The 12.0’s are capable of putting out that much power, but the battery life won’t be great if it’s constantly drawing that much power.
Gordon
Yeah but 12A at 120v is 1440w. Which means in an ideal situation an 18v battery needs to put out a constant 80A. IIRC the 6.0HO actually has a better output than the 12.0HO batteries.
I also see that some of the 120v hoists have things like “25% duty cycle at 65% of max load”. So I’m really curious what Milwaukee has for a duty cycle too.
NoahG
Love seeing my fellow entertainment industry peeps chiming in here. Our world has been abuzz today.
For those with an aversion to red, not only was this codeveloped with CM, but they are marketing their version in a more “event friendly” black case.
https://www.cmco.com/en-us/resources/cmco-articles/battery-powered-chain-hoist/?fbclid=IwAR2jJ5vnRATCqYp7MfbDI3NYu-tO3FTLz3blADqK5VqrXPWpzXJ2_UipvfM_aem_AQik8ck2EvDT9bIlS2lVPVmacM3IYo9tbJiETvTjSDw9Xn6i5QlZZwtlW5u_q9b8vpI
Peter Fox
That is the missing piece of the puzzle for me. Now CM’s involvement adds up completely.
As others have said this is not a tool the average or even above average home-gamer will have any legitimate use for nor most contractors. However to those who have use for and will see real benefits from this will probably love it.
This is definitely what I have come to expect from Milwaukee with regards to persuading disruptive innovation. I cannot even imagine any other power tool brand launching a product like this first.
Lee Watts
Interesting comments, I can see a use for these in my trade. We work on timber bridges here in australia, and these would come in handy for replacing structural timbers with steel sections under the bridge.
I like the inverted setup as there is not much clearances in some areas under a bridge, I also like the chain bag as currently we use block and tackles (sometimes up to 4 block and tackles setup for 1 lift). On the safety side i think it is great with the remote that would remove personnel from the line of fire when hoisting up.
Now to convince the boss.
AlexK
A few people commented on what to do when it’s up and the battery runs out. The remote will let you know when it’s there is 25% battery left. Bet no one will let it run out after they do that one time.
scott taylor
As usual the comments are a mixed bag again on a speciality tool. Im assuming the price for items like this from “good” brands have the litigation price as a fixed cost. Figure in high risk tools like this there are 100s of dollars baked into the price for “risk management”. As with most items you can find that by comparison of the BOM (direct Bill of materials) versus the price.
nigeldh
Great for commercial users who need a cordless lifting option. One-key gives tracking options.
I could see Lockheed using them on the shop floor with a lifting frame.
Too bad a load cell wasn’t built in. To see how much force is generated during a lift.
Put together with a 4 to 1 or 5 to 1 pulley set-up, set of fours, and one could lift 4 or 5 tons.