Air ain’t going away but battery operated have taken over the majority of the day to day work in many industries.
At home I’ve only had cordless drill and then a 1/4” impact driver for the last 20 years or more until a year ago or so I splurged on the Milwaukee “almost everything” kit. After all the batteries I had, had died for my old 18V Dewalt drill and driver.
They are now 90% go to for about anything I do around the house.
Sure when I was rebuilding the deck, the corded miter saw, worm drives and sawzall were working. Along with air nailer.
But I probably haven’t plugged in my air impact twice since I got the cordless 1/2” drive.
And the 5ah (mid size) batteries last a long time. Only time I ran through batteries was with a big 7” wire wheel on the 4” cordless grinder, prepping large areas. Example rust bubbly back bumper on my Ram. Wire wheeled the crap out of all of it. Took 90% of the paint off inside and out. Went through 2 batteries and onto a 3rd. But it was nonstop for over an hour.
The days of them overheating and short battery are over.
Assembling and disassembling a 600’ long erector set temporary steel bridge, something like 10,000 bolts, there were only 3 guns that didn’t break almost daily and only 2 that would get full tension on the big bolts.
A spline drive (heavy), a 1” air impact from Harbor Freight and a 3/4” Milwaukee cordless that the supplier gave us to torture test. That Milwaukee only burned up once. The HF 1” airs would last about 2 spans.
But my orbital, paint guns, polisher are all air. Although I’d like a cordless polisher, but my old IR one is just too nice.
