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Everybody talks about green buildings today, fine structures with green accolades attached to them. But the average commercial construction site where that masterpiece was built? In many cases, it’s a hell hole of air pollution, dust, noise, and vibration.
Diesel and gas engine generators rumble on—hour after hour—belching soot and carbon monoxide while small two-stroke and four-stroke engines howl to power everything from small generators to air compressors.
But Milwaukee Electric Tool is seeking to change that and revolutionize the construction industry with one of the most aggressive takes on cordless tool power the construction industry has seen. Today the company announces its MX Fuel power tools, equipment intended to revolutionize the construction gear category known as light equipment, turning some of the worst polluters and biggest noise makers on a construction site into clean and quiet equipment powered by giant batteries.
For those unfamiliar with the term “light equipment,” it’s the category between small hand-held power tools and heavy equipment, such as earth movers. It includes machines such as light towers powered by diesel generators on trailers, pavement breakers to bust up concrete, and core machines to cut large-diameter holes in concrete floors. Milwaukee’s MX equipment is the first of its kind.
The company is no stranger to upsetting the power tool and equipment status quo. In 2005 it introduced the first use of lithium-ion battery technology in full size power tools with its 28-volt V28 line. It demonstrated their effectiveness at a trade show by using a cordless drill and a massive ship auger bit to drill lengthwise into a pressure-treated 6x6. We were so impressed we presented the company an award.
Today, lithium-ion battery technology is the industry standard and powers an increasingly wider selection of equipment, even high-torque tools as chain saws, large miter saws and machines to thread steel pipe.
The MX line goes well beyond even that formidable gear to include commercial-size equipment such as a 4-head light tower, a hand-carry power supply (battery) unit that can recharge the line’s massive batteries or power 120-volt tools like chop saws for cutting steel studs.
Other items in the line are a full-size 14-inch cutoff saw used to cut concrete pipe, a core drill that can be hand held or mounted on a rolling stand, a pavement breaker intended to compete with tools powered by compressed air or electricity, and a drum-type drain cleaner on wheels (called the Drum Machine) used to ream out clogged sewers and drains.
Price for these brutes wasn’t available yet, but the earliest products to ship will be the cutoff saw, breaker, handheld core drill and drum machine drain cleaner, and even those won’t ship until February 2020. Other equipment will ship a few months later.
Understanding this new breed of equipment in terms of its power consumption and efficiency is difficult. And it appears to us that, as with any new technology, there will be a learning curve for companies making the leap into this heavy-duty cordless realm. For example, generator manufacturers have maximum wattage output ratings and an estimated run time at full or partial load.
Contractors use that data as a yard stick to help them gauge what the generator will do for them in terms of fuel consumption based on powering their 120-volt and 220-volt equipment. Hand-held gas engine equipment has horsepower and CC ratings. These news tools, however, are uncharted territory. Only experience will help a construction company equate the fuel use of its generators (and hand-held gas engine equipment) and their electricity consumption to charge these massive batteries.
Milwaukee took the unprecedented step of not using voltage to describe its MX batteries (the company does describe the Carry-On Power Supply as dual wattage; 3600 and 1800). Rather, to help contractors understand and equate their old equipment with this new gear, the company performed a variety of jobs such as breaking and sawing concrete, cutting pipe and sawing lumber.
The company has yet to describe any of the equipment in terms of voltage, opting instead to point to the equipment’s capability. For example, in Milwaukee’s tests, when equipped with two of the system’s XC batteries, the cutoff saw could complete an astonishing 5-inch deep cut, 14 feet long in concrete and still go on to power its way through eight pieces of 8-inch ductile iron pipe, 52 pieces of PVC pipe of the same diameter, 106 feet of corrugated steel deck, and chop through 22 8-inch concrete blocks—more than a typical day’s work.
To keep a generator running during that time, you’re looking at anywhere from one to three gallons of diesel or gasoline per hour of use, depending on the generator size and what the demand on it is. And there’s also the machine’s noise, vibration, fumes and hot exhaust surfaces.
To help potential users understand its Carry-on Power Supply, Milwaukee says that two batteries will power a 15-amp corded circular saw through 1,210 cuts in 2 x 4 framing lumber. You could frame a house with that.
Identifying the power that users wanted came about from an investment in research, Milwaukee says. It spent 10,000 hours on construction sites talking to laborers and skilled trades people.
“We discovered considerable safety and productivity challenges within some product categories,” said Andrew Plowman, vice president of product management for Milwaukee Tool in the prepared statement announcing the launch. “It was clear that today’s equipment wasn’t delivering on user needs.”
Given the engineering, marketing and product development Milwaukee has plowed into this initiative, it appears confident that the new line will deliver. The company gambled once before, and was correct, that lithium ion batteries were the way to power heavy-duty construction site tools. Now it’s making an even bigger gamble; it’s up to the construction industry now to decide.
Post time: Nov-27-2019