Good find.
It's like this system was a design challenge on Junkyard Wars. I don't mean that as an insult.
On one live, creative, and some decent quality, on the other hand, death trap. I do like his comments on repair. It is interesting how you don't have to go far back to find stuff that very much showed folks how to repair it. Of course this is also the issue when things go to circuit cards, modeled plastic, and non-standardized bits. Of course some of that can be worked around. Sites like ifixit have helped a lot of folks.
Some of this concept is obsolete just because it was based around re-using what at the time was expensive (motor/drill), which now is a very cheap part to make, so no real need for the multi-use of one with rather complex contraptions. It has all flipped now. Now the drill/motor part is cheap to make, all those other parts (castings and such) are expensive to make verses at the time it was made that sort of thing was made by everyone, so it was no big deal to make such parts cheap.
The part that does hold it compactness for users who need to be able to pack away. For those of us who strive to have all our tools stack up and pack away into a cabinet(s)/containers where everything we have can quickly be re-located this is something fun to see.
