Model Railway Forum

eagle125 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 06, 2018 10:59 am No 1 in the hit parade is Dremel ????
is there any other a wee bit cheaper, and that lovely Banggood site has some on but is that too risky (the multimeter I got for 2.99 still works ok )

Cheers Tony

Most of the stuff I've bought from Banggood has been fine - even bought my new oneplus5 smart phone from them as they were cheapest. Alternates include those that come up on offer from time to time at places like Aldi and Lidl like this https://www.aldi.co.uk/workzone-170w-ro ... 9148737100 one.

Edit: Seems the old way of inserting a URL in place of selected text not available (yet?)

I have always used my trusty Minicraft drill which is around 30+ years old and though I've occasionally tried others they dont really compare. My Minicraft MB1012 drill runs from 12v and has a power rating of 100W. (12,000 RPM Max.) I can use 0.3 to 6mm drill bits and I've drilled through things one would normally use a much larger drill. It is the best investment along with the Minicraft sander that I've ever had. (Though my grandad had bought the minidrill and I was given it in an almost unused condition after he died. I didn't know he had one!).

I have a minicraft, 12 volt, too, but its a tad limited. Also, have 2 dremels, and an Aldi copy. I think as my dad used to say (you only need to buy it once, if you buy the best). You can pick up the basic dremel, now , fairly cheaply. You dont need all the singing/ dancing, flexible shafts, no spanner collets. Folkestone tool co, do very cut price stuff, as do Axminster tool. Dont buy a cordless one, they are terrible. Taint the machine, tis the battery

Minicraft did do more then one drill. All I know is I've been really impressed with mine. I've even run it from my car on occasions in the past. (Actually a car I used to have).
Something of note is that someone once made a comment that the Minicraft transformers stopped working with them and they needed to buy new ones. This puzzled me as I have never had any issues with mine. However it has since occurred to me that not everyone will know about the overload cutout which very rarely ever cuts in, but when it does, it needs manually resetting before the power is restored. It is easy to reset, but if someone doesn't know this they may think the transformer has stopped working.
As even in regular use one may only trip the cut out every other month if one is using the drill on a very demanding job, so as it is a rare event it may be that the user who mentioned this didn't know it had a resettable overload cut out built in. Was just a thought.

I brought a cordless version from EBAY, great at first good battery life then just died, wouldn’t charge or do anything. Need to replace it and again looking at cordless for convenience ( just a better quality one) but concerned at the comment that corded are better. Anybody else find this or are there any recommendations re cordless.

Hugha wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 10:47 am I brought a cordless version from EBAY, great at first good battery life then just died, wouldn’t charge or do anything. Need to replace it and again looking at cordless for convenience ( just a better quality one) but concerned at the comment that corded are better. Anybody else find this or are there any recommendations re cordless.

I have a 12v drill that the batteries packed up on, and rather than spend on a new one, i removed the cells from the battery casing, soldered some cables on the contacts inside, making sure they were right ones, and put a cigarette style plug on the other end to use in my portable power pack, i have a lidl brand rotary tool and if/when the battery goes, i will do the same to that,

I bought the basic Dremel which is good - accessories can be added later as you need them.

Mountain Goat wrote: ↑Sat Oct 06, 2018 7:27 pm Minicraft did do more then one drill. All I know is I've been really impressed with mine. I've even run it from my car on occasions in the past. (Actually a car I used to have).
Something of note is that someone once made a comment that the Minicraft transformers stopped working with them and they needed to buy new ones. This puzzled me as I have never had any issues with mine. However it has since occurred to me that not everyone will know about the overload cutout which very rarely ever cuts in, but when it does, it needs manually resetting before the power is restored. It is easy to reset, but if someone doesn't know this they may think the transformer has stopped working.
As even in regular use one may only trip the cut out every other month if one is using the drill on a very demanding job, so as it is a rare event it may be that the user who mentioned this didn't know it had a resettable overload cut out built in. Was just a thought.

It was me who reported the issues with the Minicraft PSUs. Without going into details the ones we had were being used virtually every day and not always carefully. This resulted in various components varying from diodes, capacitors and thyristors releasing the magic smoke. Our technician revived them several times but they all eventually ended up beyond repair and of course could no longer be replaced.

Richard

I thought it was someone on here that mentioned it!
Is mine different as I've used mine for years and had no issues at all. I actually have a second one which I've never used as a back up as I'd bought one for the sander and when I inherited the drill it had one, so one has never had a plug fitted to it. The ones I have date from around the mid to late 1980's, possibly very early 1990's at the latest.
I did open the one I use up once as I fitted an extra socket to it as the plug part of my minidrill started to play up. (I still use the original plug and socket for the sander). I dont remember what was inside as it was over ten years ago. I believe most of it was the transformer with its coils.
Also, at the moment I am using my Minicraft transformer for powering my 12v Unimat 1 lathe as the modern electrical "Transformer" which doesn't use the traditional wire wound transformer but uses small electrical components instead... It stopped working a couple of weeks after I bought the lathe. I didn't want to send the thing back to the factory as I had work for the lathe to do! Hence I put a different plug on it to run it with the Minicraft transformer instead.
One of my brothers is going to have a look at the Unimat box of tricks. I'm fortunate he knows the ins and outs of the electrical side due to his past profefession (Though most of his work was with much larger electrical things).