One tool instead of two: Battery/electric

[Acrobat]

I'd like Festool to make one version of their tools that can switch between powered and battery on the fly. I have often bought a tool and wrestled over whether I should get the battery version or the corded and ideally would like both, depending on where I am and the application required. But of course buying two or everything is cost prohibitive and not always required, so please how about being able to run a powered tool then switch out the plug it cord and plug in a battery when I want would be sweet.
I see adverts for ryobi now being able to do these with their range and if they can do it, surely festool can.

Oh and with the Vecturo a dust chute, I have on on my Bosch multitool seems odd festal promoting dat free work when they don't apply that to their Vecturo.

Lastly square drive bits please.

 

[johnleve]

I have never understood why it is not possible to just take a battery pack and have it be a transformer that takes line voltage in and then converts it to DC.  It appears rather simple to me but I have to admit I don't know much about more complicated electronics.

 

[Tom the Remodeler]

Dewalt used to do this for their 24 volt line, where you could either use a 24v battery or a AC/DC converter. The explanation from the Dewalt rep at the time was it was marketed to first responders, for instance needing to cut someone out of a crashed car. The first guy would run to the car with the cordless recip saw and start cutting, while the second responder would get a generator set up and string lengths of extension cord for extended operations.

My complaint with this method is that it is a compromise, which necessarily means you are making sacrifices (TI-15, anybody?......). In this case, since battery technology wasn't yet up to the task of creating a cordless product with the power of a corded tool, they made the tools to perform to the abilities that the 24v platform allowed. So, even with a cord, the recip saw would not approach the performance of a top-tier corded model, and as a cordless tool it was terribly bulky.

While convenient, I think that the utility of cordless tools in the production environment to be somewhat overestimated. Yes, it saves you the trouble of stringing another extension cord, but you will ultimately still need to plug in a charger, and depending on the tool you may or may not have to sacrifice performance to "cut the cord".

For instance, Hilti has developed a cordless dust extractor that performs at the same level as their VC-20/40 line, roughly equivalent to a CT-26/36. To achieve this, Hilti uses dual 36v batteries, and my understanding is that run-time is still pretty short......

 

[wrightwoodwork]

Yeah I looked at the hilti system it's very expensive it does use the 36v batteries to run but it has to be thier 6 amp ones which in the uk are about £300+vat then you need 2 so now it's upto 600 plus the vac at roughly 900 so you're talking about 1500+ vat then in cordless mode from what I was told only rum for about 18 minutes. So at that price I decided against it.