Choosing the Drill: A Detailed Guide to Making the Right Purchase

To do a good job, it's not enough to choose the right drill bits. You also need to buy the right tool to perform this operation. That's right: if the purchase isn't suited to your needs, you risk damaging the surface you're working on. And you're making a bad investment for your workshop. That's why you need to choose the right drill for every occasion.

How powerful should the drill you're about to buy be? And which models have the right motion: should it be rotary only or also percussion? The questions that go through your head when you need to choose and buy a drill suitable for your activities are many. Here are some useful references to guide your purchase in the right direction. Avoiding gross mistakes.

Power Supply of Your Drill

First point to consider when choosing a drill for your activity: is battery or corded power better? The answer depends on how and where you'll use it: a battery-powered drill is more maneuverable, suitable for work that requires constant movement.

Maybe you work on ladders and scaffolding, so the battery model is fundamental. But, of course, in general terms it expresses lower power compared to a corded model. Which, in turn, imposes reduced movement and higher weight.

If you already know how you'll use the drill, you can choose the right model, remembering that battery models can now offer respectable performance, making you forget the historical power disparity compared to corded models.

Manual or Bench Drill: Which to Use?

Second decision you need to make when deciding to choose a new drill for your workshop: better a manual model, with ergonomic grip, or a bench drill? The latter presents itself as a machine for the workbench, fixed to the work surface, that allows you to move the drilling element along a vertical axis. There are no gaps or burrs: it moves in a constrained manner.

This is the strength but also the limit of the bench drill: if you need to make equal holes on elements that you can disassemble and bring to the work surface, and you demand maximum precision, the choice is oriented toward the bench drill. If your work process requires holes in walls, in a wooden piece of furniture, on the window sill, and in thousands of other situations, you need to buy a manual drill.

Better With or Without Brushes?

The answer is simple in this case: you should choose a brushless drill, that is, without brushes. This way you can count on a more powerful and durable tool compared to traditional drills with the classic carbon brush motor.

This structural characteristic allows you to reduce friction and internal wear, increasing the life of the tool and its performance. Specifically, you'll have greater torque and rotation speed with the ability to maintain high performance even under load. There are fewer parts in contact and subject to wear, maintenance is reduced, and the same goes for failures.

What Is Adequate Power?

One of the crucial points when choosing the best drill for your activity: power. For occasional, hobby use, the recommendation is to aim for a power of 500-700 Watts, useful for drilling wood, plastic, and also for making small holes in walls.

If you use the drill regularly and also use it for more demanding work, you can reach 1,000 Watts with rotary and percussion motion so your hands are free for masonry work. Beyond this threshold we have professional drills for those who use this tool every day. Another aspect to consider is that of the revolutions per minute that allow you to influence the rotation speed. Let's try to identify the ideal revolutions per minute (RPM) by material type/use so you can choose your drill:

• Wood: 1500–3000 RPM.
• Metal (steel, iron): 500–1500 RPM
• Wall / Concrete (with percussion): 1000–1500 RPM
• Screwing: 300–800 RPM

• Plastic: 1000–2000 RPM

In the first case high speed is needed to obtain clean holes without splinters. In the second case, we need lower speed to avoid overheating and bit wear. Avoid too high speeds with plastic, as they can melt the material. Percussion is more important than rotation speed, but still a good base speed is needed.

Rotary or Percussion Motion

Another important decision to make when choosing a drill: what should the motion be like? Better rotary or percussion? Let's start by giving clear definitions: to drill particularly hard building materials, such as stone, you need to use percussion motion. In this case, in addition to rotating, the bit strikes the surface vertically.

This way you can also drill concrete provided that suitable bits are used. If you don't need to do such work, you can choose a drill with only rotary motion. But today most advanced models have both functions: the important thing is to use percussion only for drilling building materials like concrete, stone, and other similar solutions.