Impact drivers powered by air compressors have long been used in the garage for vehicles. Small, cordless, lightweight impact drivers are a newer tool for home improvement. Driving fasteners with great torque is the forte of impact drivers, not drilling holes.
While you can use an impact driver in a pinch to drill a hole, that's not what it's best used for. Use a drill for boring holes with drill bits , for driving small fasteners into soft wood, and for drilling into masonry. Owning an impact drill means that you can switch to using that for all fasteners except for the smaller ones. Because an impact drill is so powerful, it tends to draw in short screws faster than you might expect. This can result in pulling in the screw deeper than you want.
One application where this is particularly important is when driving drywall screws into drywall. You need to have precise control to prevent the screw head from drawing below the paper level and into the gypsum core. A drill will give you that level of control; an impact driver will not.
Use a drill for drilling into any type of masonry such as concrete , brick , or manufactured veneer stone. Use the impact driver when you want to drive most fasteners, except for very short ones. An impact driver is especially good for uses like driving 3-inch screws into wood, a task that is difficult for a drill even with pre-drilling the hole.
Impact drivers excel at driving fasteners into dense or knotty wood. You'll also want to use an impact driver for machine bolts or lag bolts. A hammer drill combines rotational bursts with front-to-back movement the hammering action to bore into difficult masonry that presents an obstacle for ordinary drills. If an impact driver has less utility than a drill, then a hammer drill has less utility than either of those two tools—at least for most homeowners.
Purchase a hammer drill only if you anticipate doing a lot of drilling into masonry. Otherwise, consider renting or buying one. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads.
Create a personalised ads profile. The drill maintains constant turning torque using gears. Now imagine punching the brick wall I said imagine — this is how the impact driver works. Check out this video of a Festool PDC drill to see how the mechanism works. The method by which torque is delivered is what separates the two tools, and ultimately highlights their advantages and disadvantages. Impact drivers deliver the highest torque when operated at their fastest speed, as this allows the biggest impact of the hammer against the anvil.
Drills, on the other hand, have the highest turning force when in the lowest and slowest gear. Optimised drilling speeds are often compromised with impact drivers too. I was recently speaking to a customer who commented…. Because impact drivers deliver their torque in bursts, lasting a fraction of a second, there is no equivalent force being transmitted back to the user — making them much safer to hold with just one hand.
More recently, impact drivers are being equipped with different speed settings to give the user more control in screwdriving applications. Milwaukee impact drivers also have a very clever feature, which is a special setting for self-drilling screws. Drills are ideal for drilling and boring applications, as the constant turning force will achieve a smoother, more accurate and cleaner hole.
Precise screwdriving applications are also best suited to a conventional drill, as rotational speeds are more easily controlled, torque is maintained at slower speeds, and you receive feedback from the machine — more on that later. Unlike an impact driver, if a drill is turning a fastener using 30Nm of torque, an equal force is being transferred back to the operator.
Well, not quite. However, torque figures on specification sheets can be confusing depending on how the torque is measured. A great example of this is hard and soft torque. Maybe the best way to describe this is to imagine driving a woodscrew into timber.
As the screw is driven deeper, more and more torque is required, gradually increasing until the head reaches the material — this is referred to as soft torque.
Now consider driving a threaded bolt into a pre-tapped steel plate; once the thread is engaged there is very little resistance encountered as the bolt passes freely through the threads. The torque at that instant increases dramatically, giving a very high reading — this is considered hard torque. The difference is: drills can maintain the torque level throughout the entire turning process. Many people are often surprised to see a powerful drilling machine continue to drive in a large construction screw, when an impact driver with a much higher torque specification, has long given up.
The principle of a metal anvil being struck repeatedly by spinning hammers is bound to generate noise — and this is one of the drawbacks of an impact driver.
The noise from the drill comes from the motor and gearbox combined, and although you can hear it, the sound levels are certainly more bearable. Whilst we would always recommend wearing ear protection in any drilling or driving application, drills are certainly quieter than impact drivers. The exception is when impact or percussion drilling in masonry, with a combi drill. More recently, a handful of power tool manufacturers have launched tools that look just like an impact driver, but much quieter in use.
Pulse tools have been around for some time but were only traditionally found in pneumatic machines — often used on assembly lines. The wave then pushes two paddles around a sealed chamber, a quarter turn each time. The other benefits of Pulse technology are:. The downside is: torque is reduced making these machines ideal for small to medium-sized woodscrews and small self-drilling screws or self-tappers. For these specific applications, tools like the Milwaukee Fuel Surge might just be the perfect screwdriving companion.
Having highlighted the key features and differences between impact drivers vs drills, one could argue that the choice of tool will ultimately be decided by the amount of time the operator spends drilling or driving. However, one application often precedes the other, which could explain why the drill and impact driver partnership is ubiquitous on the jobsite. Shop now. Pay in 3 interest-free instalments with Klarna. Discover More. Get access to exclusive trade prices and much more by applying today.
Impact Driver vs Drill: which one do I need? Size Front end Working mechanisms Torque delivery Torque Noise Impact Driver vs Drill — Size When I first set about trying to explain the characteristics of each tool, it prompted a sigh and plenty of head-scratching. Drill Size — mm. Impact Driver Size — mm. What is an impact driver?
What is a drill? Impact Driver vs Drill — Front end Another visible difference is at the front of the tools.
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