I'm in exactly the same position you are in, and made the wrong decision a few years ago...
- Facing retirement
- I work on stuff much less now
-Moved my IR 60 gal vertical compressor to my new house
- No power in garage
- Moved all my 30 years worth of collecting air tools (more than 50 tools)
Its been 3 years. The compressor is still not hooked up, I've bought some nice battery tools, have no use for the air tools (and the seals and O-rings are all dried out now, so every one of them needs to be rebuilt), and now I am considering another move and have to go through it all again.
Buy the battery stuff. No question. Get rid of the damned air stuff and enjoy the quiet and no air hoses.
rslifkin said:
Any time I use the air impact in my garage, I walk over to the snowblower and grab the hearing protection muffs first.
Do you mean ratchet? Because air ratchets are louder than battery ones, but the reverse is true of impacts.
Trent
PowerDork
6/10/21 9:22 a.m.
Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:
In reply to Trent :
I figured that maybe it was so loud because it was a cheap HF tool. I guess that's just the way they all are.
The HF air ratchets are the loudest of the bunch. Good grief those things will make your ears ring. IR makes a super powerful one that is much quieter (but still pretty dang loud) but for the money they ask for it I bought a Matco cordless and never looked back
GIRTHQUAKE said:
Before you buy, take a look at Project Farm's comparison videos and research lightly to see what conglomerate owns who- I think DeWalt and Milwaukee are owned by the same company. The only one I know of that isn't apart of some corporate hegemony is Makita.
They absolutely are not owned by the same corporation. DeWalt is owned by the Stanley/Black and Decker group and Milwaukee is under the umbrella of TTI which also owns makes Ryobi and Ridgid consumer power tools.
There's no way I'd ever dump an I-R air compressor and a bunch of good air tools for battery-powered ones. Batteries age out surprisingly fast with occasional use, and replacement batteries are so expensive, you might as well just buy the tool again. I'll admit, I'm old school. Buy the tool once, use it for a lifetime. Hand it down to your children. You can do that with your air tools, but not your battery-powered toys.
