Servo - December 2011

bottom plates completed the chassis assembly.

Once the chassis was finished, the components were mounted and fine-tuned. The result was a highly effective under-cutter bar spinner.

Expect to see Low Blow and Vile Ant continue climbing the Antweight ranking. SV

DRILL BABY, DRILL.

Or, the G d, the Bad, and the Ugly For about a decade or more, it has been possible to get cheap cordless drills from Harbor Freight ( www.harbor freight.com). These have steadily improved in power over that time, with the standard voltage climbing from 9.6V through 12V and 14.4V to 18V — all with essentially the same size gearbox and motor RPM.

My requirements were: • 14.4V–24V nominal voltage.

● by Pete Smith

Much “Googling” later, I found three possible candidates.

The first was a new drill by Harbor Freight (Figure 1) — their Drillmaster model 68239. The second was the 18V Power Smith model from Northern Tool (Figure 2). The last was one advertised as being by Boston Industrial (Figure 3) on Amazon.

I dismantled all three as per my article in the November ‘06 issue of SERVO, and they all came apart without major problems. I will cover the details of each drill in turn.

The Good

First, the Harbor Freight 68239. The case of this drill has one screw hidden behind a label (Figure 4), but you can easily pierce the label to get at it.