I've been thinking about buying a 3/8" cordless ratchet to use on the drawbar on my milling machine. I need one that I can operate with one hand (on/off, loosen/tighten) while I hold the spindle brake. I've looked around but I haven't found one that looks like it would be easy to use in this manner. Right now I'm using a Craftsman 3/8" pear head type ratchet. I can flip the direction lever with my thumb. Anyone here have any suggestions?
All I have ever used on a drawbar is a box wrench. After starting and turning the drawbar into the collet or tool holder by hand all that is required is a good snug up. There is no need to use a gorilla grip on a drawbar the key and taper on the tool holder/collet is what is doing the work.
I agree that the tool holders don't have to be cranked down. I've got a Grizzly G0704 that I converted to CNC. On some parts I'm swapping tools every 30 seconds. Do 100 tool changes in an hour or two and you'll be looking at something faster too.
If you are swapping tools that much I would recommend that you look into a pnuematic drawbar actuator.
Or stepping to a new(newer used) machine altogether.
But if a cordless ratchet meets your needs best I would recommend a MAC TOOLS kit. https://www.mactools.com/en-us/Power-Tools/Cordless-Tools/18e1e43c-dea7-421a-88a9-a4ae0153a996/12V-MAX-Cordless-Ratchet-Kits
I just bought the Husky unit from Home D, since I had a gift card. Reviews are good—it's small-ish, you can lock it so that you can break bolts free/do a final tightening (and the force you can apply to it is actually higher than the Milwaukee unit), but the battery is non-swappable. That's not a huge issue for me, personally, but if you need it for all-day work it might be for you.
sounds like you want one where direction is controlled by a body mounted button or by rocker (forward vs reverse) so you get one-hand, no hand off. I'm not sure about that requirement.
I've got the HF Earthquake and looked at the Milwakee, DeWalt, ACDelco, Husky variants before settling for HF...which I like:
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/hf-tool-passfail/50437/page13/
Raze said:sounds like you want one where direction is controlled by a body mounted button or by rocker (forward vs reverse) so you get one-hand, no hand off. I'm not sure about that requirement.
That's exactly what I'm looking for. So far I haven't found one. I might have to go with a 3/8" electric impact driver instead. It won't be quite as useful around the shop though.
I rarely buy tools, same proto ratchet for 35 years, for example. However, just bought the Milwaukee 12 volt Fuel (brushless) cordless ratchet, compact impact, and work light. So sweet. Amazing power/weight, battery life, etc. impact does 250 ft lbs, has 3/8" anvil, and light. Good stuff. Jcamper.
I have this AC/Delco from Amazon and have been very happy with it.
Strong enough to remove shocks, brakes e.t.c.
Fits places where my 1/2" electric impact doesn't.
It has the directional change in the head, so not fully one handed.
I have a the Milwaukee. It's pretty decent but I don't know that you could reverse it one handed easily. It's also fairly heavy.
If you have air in the shop you could use something like this. You would have to be super careful to not over tighten it or damage the collets, but forward and reverse are a rocker switch away.
I recently bought a Milwaukee 3/8" cordless, my first. I must say, I love it. This is the slightly older, less powerful model so I got a good deal on it. I now use it all the time. It is not part of my larger Makita cordless set, but I can deal with one extra charger. It is not one-handed operation, but if you are on the fence about needing a power wrench, I say go for it.
I went to Lowe's and looked at the DeWalt impact wrenches since I already have a 20v battery and charger. I found this 3/8" compact impact. It weighs about the same as a cordless ratchet. I can use it on my car too.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N3JN60H
Advan046 said:If you are swapping tools that much I would recommend that you look into a pnuematic drawbar actuator.
Or stepping to a new(newer used) machine altogether.
But if a cordless ratchet meets your needs best I would recommend a MAC TOOLS kit. https://www.mactools.com/en-us/Power-Tools/Cordless-Tools/18e1e43c-dea7-421a-88a9-a4ae0153a996/12V-MAX-Cordless-Ratchet-Kits
This is a Grizzly benchtop mill that I converted to CNC. Nobody makes a pneumatic draw bar for it. I don't really want to spend any more time making upgrades for it either. My plan for career B is to buy a small Hass or Brother and park it and myself in the garage full time. That plan is at least 10 years out right now though. Something that size would take up most of of my workshop.
pinchvalve said:I recently bought a Milwaukee 3/8" cordless, my first. I must say, I love it. This is the slightly older, less powerful model so I got a good deal on it. I now use it all the time. It is not part of my larger Makita cordless set, but I can deal with one extra charger. It is not one-handed operation, but if you are on the fence about needing a power wrench, I say go for it.
If it had a way to change direction with one hand I would have already ordered it. I might still order one for working on my car.
Wow.......don't forget to take that thing off the drawbar before you hit the mill go button. You are likely more disciplined than me. Finally learned to use only an open end wrench and make sure the wrench is hung in its place before I push run. Dropped it off the top of the head with the mill running a few times before I learned. And yes - I did sling the lathe chuck wrench across the room - ONCE.
Advan046 said:But if a cordless ratchet meets your needs best I would recommend a MAC TOOLS kit. https://www.mactools.com/en-us/Power-Tools/Cordless-Tools/18e1e43c-dea7-421a-88a9-a4ae0153a996/12V-MAX-Cordless-Ratchet-Kits
I have the Mac and I love it, but not only does it lack the single handed direction change that you are seeking, it's actually a little hard to make the change with both hands. It's just not a really slick mechanism.
It's worth noting that the Mac does use DeWalt batteries (DeWalt and Mac are both owned by Stanley). I bought mine as a bare tool because I already had a 12v DeWalt drill/driver that came with two batteries and a charger.
So I just bought a used HF earthquake ratchet with a dead battery charger. Seeing as these charger and batteries are unique to this tool,
I was thinking of hacking it to use Ryobi 18v batteries as that is what I have for battery powered tools. Normally I use air ratchets, but I've grown addicted to the battery tools now. My question is whether the the sticking out of the battery is a big issue? Is it going to be in my way? So another thought was to run a short power cord out of it and attach the ryobi batteries to that? Ok, I know that sounds stupid... I could just fix the charger and the batteries, but that would not be interesting. :)
nimblemotorsports said:So I just bought a used HF earthquake ratchet with a dead battery charger. Seeing as these charger and batteries are unique to this tool,
I was thinking of hacking it to use Ryobi 18v batteries as that is what I have for battery powered tools. Normally I use air ratchets, but I've grown addicted to the battery tools now. My question is whether the the sticking out of the battery is a big issue? Is it going to be in my way? So another thought was to run a short power cord out of it and attach the ryobi batteries to that? Ok, I know that sounds stupid... I could just fix the charger and the batteries, but that would not be interesting. :)
The Earthquake model appears to me to be identical to an AC Delco branded ratchet on Amazon
For which Amazon sells batteries:
But is it more fun to do something like this..gotta love this guy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb0GtjB4N3Y&t=10s&app=desktop
While his workbench is as disorganized as mine, I would never trust a man with a disorganized workbench.
If you want to cross-purpose it, an impact driver is fantastic on cars. My Porter Cable impact has almost completely replaced my old school ratchet, plus it's compact and dead easy to use one handed. OTOH I have no idea if it would work for your application.
Good call on the impact driver rather than ratchet. You'll probably find that you don't even need to hold the spindle brake and that a few zaps of the impact will be fine.
My mill has a Kurt power drawbar and it uses a small butterfly impact to tighten/loosen the drawbar. My mill has no spindle brake and it works great.
Just a quick follow up. I tested the impact on the mill and as speculated I don't need to use the spindle brake. I just grabbed the spindle and gave the impact a squeeze. The torque adjustment is basically by number of impacts so I'll need to calibrate my trigger finger.
In other news I used it to swap wheels on my GTI for a track day last week. It doesn't have enough torque to crack the lugs loose after they were torqued while the car was hot. I had to step on an 15" breaker bar to get them loose. They were probably over 200 ft/lbs when the car cooled down completely. It does have enough to tighten them to the required 88 ft/lbs though.
TasdevEngineer2of3 said:Wow.......don't forget to take that thing off the drawbar before you hit the mill go button. You are likely more disciplined than me. Finally learned to use only an open end wrench and make sure the wrench is hung in its place before I push run. Dropped it off the top of the head with the mill running a few times before I learned. And yes - I did sling the lathe chuck wrench across the room - ONCE.
In the 8 years I've owned it I've done several thousand tool changes and I've never done that. Crashed more than a few tools though.
I rock the harbor freight cordless rachet and love it.
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