SDS Drill
SDS drills can now be purchased for a very reasonable price, but are they any better than a hammer drill, percussion drill or impact drill?
If you have never use a SDS drill before then you could be thinking that the difference between a normal hammer drill and a SDS drill is that the chuck accepts different types of drill bit, this is of course one difference but the real difference is that the sds drill contains a pneumatic hammer and is much more efficient at drilling than a regular power drill.
The SDS system was developed by Bosch and is still extremelypopular today.
There are a few different types of SDS drill bit/chuck. The SDS and SDS max drill bits are almost the same and can be used in either a SDS machine or a SDS+ drill. The SDS Max system is completely different and uses a spline shaft, which will not fit in a standard SDS machine or a SDS+ Machine.
This is a heavy duty Bosch machine in use-
You can now purchase a cheap SDS drill for about $40 but the quality and features will not be anywhere near as good as a quality made machine such as Bosch, Dewalt, Makita or Milwaukee.
You can use normal drill bits in most SDS machines either by replacing the chuck with a standard chuck or by using a chuck adaptor which enables standard drill bits to be used in a SDS machine.
The better quality machines also have roto stop, this is essential if you want to use the drill for chiseling. With a machine that has roto stop you can remove tiles, remove plaster or even demolish walls with it.
You can get SDS drills in either corded or cordless versions, but not many of the cordless versions have the roto stop feature on them- yet!
