I really enjoy your regular tests and reviews, but this Frankenstein stuff is a real treat. Can’t wait to see a 3 phase converted Amazon special or Hemi powered Ryobi in the future.

Here for Science. Please do this every day. :-)

Another thought, most welders can be adjusted down pretty low voltage, just crank the welder down to like 22V, and hook that bad boy up. Plenty of amps then.

I noticed the curve was smoother from the power supply vs the battery packs. Neat!

That power supply coming to life so to speak after unplugging is a good thing. It is discharging so that you won't accidently shock yourself if messing with it unplugged from power stored in the capacitors.

A power supply with a remote sense line connected directly to the input of the tool would compensate for any voltage drop in the long wires and metal connectors. Just a thought...

I'd be interested to see some wild RC hobby motors swapped into a tool. I worked on a buddy's combat robot and the tiny little brushless motor that drove the weapon makes 3hp and is absolutely violent.

Bring the + and - sense wires out from the power supply and connect them at the load end of the wires. That will effectively eliminate the wire resistance and keep a steady voltage at the tool. Much better regulation of the beans.

I feel like the ultimate solution would: -Have the "battery" clips intact -Have capacitors or super capacitors inside the "battery" to soften current pulses -Have thicker wires -Have a voltage drop sense line -Have adjustable voltage, potentiality up to 24VDC to overclock the tool

Use a high amperage variac connected to 220/240vac on a 50amp breaker to maintain a solid 120VAC with a DC inverter capable of 24VDC at 3000 watts. Use welding wire for connections as it has more surface area and designed for high heat and floating grounds. This will get you headed in the right direction.

I died when you said OSHA no no box 😂😂😂. Love those one liners man.

I actually tried to make something like this a few years back. However, I didn't want to spend the money on a high-watt PSU, so instead I scavenged a transformer out of a dead surver UPS, a big bridge rectifier from something else, and bought a capacitor the size of a coke can off an electronics supply site. This made, quite possible, the absolute worst unregulated linear voltage regulator mankind has ever seen. It did actually power the drill and not kill anything (including me), but the final power box was the size of a shoe box, weighed about 20lbs, and barely had enough torque to turn a 1/2" spade bit. I keep it around just because it looks hilarious, but I don't actually use it. The concept was sound though! I think what these devices really need is a super-capacitor on the output side to help absorb the initial current draw from starting up the stalled motor. The big thing that a battery can do that a switching power supply can't is handle huge current draw for relatively short periods of time without sagging too much. A Lithium-Ion battery can put out some fairly ridiculous amounts of current for a second or two with much less sag than your average switching power supply. You need something that acts a bit like the start capacitor on an air conditioner to help feed that initial spike when the motor starts up, because the bulk cap on the input side of your average switcher just can't hold the voltage up long enough. Basically, you need more watts-in-a-can to get the motor started, but once it is moving the PSU should be able to meet the power needs just fine.

I love when you do these episodes, it's way more fun than "let's see one dynograph v another". Get Colin Furze to send you something, you'll probably end up with a V8 supercharged impact wrench.

Cool. I think a plug in option is a great idea for cordless tools. I rigged up my kids hot wheels track booster (Needed 4D batteries!) to an old power brick and plugged it in. The cars stopped falling off the loop. t worked great.

I can picture AvE enjoying this while Prudence is observing with disapproval in the background

Love it! I use a “hacked” server computer power supply to power my RC charger, but never thought to hook it up to Milwaukee tools… They sell battery kits on eBay with locking tabs. Maybe combine that with home brew 12V power supply based on Branded (HP) server PSUs that are CHEAP on flea-bay. They’re switch mode, have excellent voltage tolerances and overcurrent protection + efficiency, and some even have cooling fans built in.

I am a principal electrical engineer and I have experience working with power tools similar to the ones that you are using. I suggest putting a lot of capacitance at the end of those leads from the power supply. Power rating is not sufficient when doing these tests. The capacitors act as local power sources close to the power tool. The long wires act as inductance restricting short term current bursts which are required by the tool. So, my recommendation is that you add capacitors inside the battery pack which is no longer connected.

Just get two (big) car batteries in series and youre at more than enough amps

I think three 6V golf cart batteries connected in series would be interesting to see.

Just need Keysight or BK to send you a nice 3kW lab supply. For science. Some large units are rentable. Might be an idea.

as an electronics engineer with some experience in that field use XT90 connectors not xt60 ! great video as always ! Cheers

I wonder how clean the dc power looks from that supply on a scope? Maybe just 2 car batteries in series would be better. 24 volts of nice clean dc power with all the amps she can suffer. It's pretty hard to replicate true chemical dc power from ac, much the same way making a true sign wave from a dc source. Thanks guys.

Maybe diy op battery (will be cheaper) Like 20 cells of samsung 40T Or beef up pcb power lines (extra solder etc) on bms and motor driver so there is no loss of power And extra beef up battery connection (extra external xt60 or something)

the connector, XT60's use them in drones. Take an ice pick or 1.5mm allen head and spread the pins in the male connector. sligthly expanding them will make the connection pass max amps and stay together. its a common thing to do every now and then. love the channel.

"O.S.H.A. NO NO BOX"... 😆 The writing and narration on this channel is top notch.

Very cool. The lack in voltage sag def helped a bit, a slightly bigger power supply would've done the trick but it's not as fun as a 1.5kw like you said. Excellent work boys keep em comin

great scott! did one of these conversions in a video a couple years back but with much lower expectations and using junked makita drills. he includes schematics and wiring diagrams.

These science test videos are extremely fun to watch

"OSHA No No Box" that had me laughing. 🤣

Make a battery/capacitor hybrid. put caps in parallel with your battery pack. Should be really good for break loose jobs, but top out the same on long jobs. They're also much lighter and last WAY longer than batteries.

I just watched his video the other day and I was surprised how few views there were on it. Solid work!

Adding a proper connector and a better dummy battery could actually be a good addition to many people's workshops , considering that you dont have to wasted electricity on battery inefficient charging and power conversion, but also the hassle of charging it. Very good idea, I am actually surprised that companies dont make such dummy batteries as similar contraptions as similar products already exist for cameras for example.

I have a similar setup. Three is a voltage display on my unit with adjustment. The Max current output is 20 amps and I adjusted the voltage to 21 volts; so the max power output is 420 watts. I hooked it up to my ridgid tools. All worked out well except for the sds plus hammer tool.

This is definitely the type of mad science collaborations I want to see lol. I actually wondered after the gas milwaukee what would happen if an engine was put on a air gun like the thor which have a different hammering apparatus that meant for high ripems. Keep doing what you guys do

An XT-60 connector for all that...LOVE IT!!

Would love to see voltage measurements at the tool under load on this guy (actually it'd be neat to see in general for stock tools as well). Those wires are dropping voltage which lowers the motor capability - let's see a 21V supply (equivalent to 5S lithium ion at full charge) with 10 gauge cables and then crank it up till the smoke comes out!

The sketch factor is real. I love it.

"OSHA no-no-box" literally chuckled

Gotta love a Frankenstein⚡ power pack! Igor would be impressed! 😆👍

Sketch (x) has a direct relationship with fun (y)

HIs amazing he took that crapy old cordless tech and converted to high tech wired.... Genius

The descriptions of the magical pixies at work are hilarious

I would have to guess that the cutting out would be to something like a GFCI in the power supply, detecting current leakage and cutting off the power. Tho at only 18V it’s unlikely that you’d feel it all that much

I'd have just Frankensteined my own version of makitas battery backpack, but this thing is just awesome. XD

As someone who does tinkering using 24v power supplies, not all power supplies are the same. A lower wattage quality supply with good components will vastly outperform a higher (advertised) wattage Chinesium special. The good power supplies like Mean Well are also heavily counterfeited because of the disparity in quality. Your success if you decide to ramp up this experiment will depend heavily on the quality of power supply you acquire. Also looks like you're using XT60 connectors. Upgrade to XT150 or EC5 connectors to mitigate amperage bottlenecks.

You could also piggyback a battery pack with the power supply, as long as you do not overvoltage the max 21v used in a 5 cell battery pack, there is no risk of having them explode but connect the wires at the output and not to the cells, it would have to flow trough al the circuit resulting in power losses. I had to do that once with a semidead/underperforming battery since I only had that one at hand.

Tim Taylor would be proud , "More power!"

This is awesome! Lol thanks for the fun!

You could build another yourself pretty easily, just need a multimeter, soldering iron, and a driver set. Get the PSU, a cheap battery, some XT90 connectors, some high load resistors (just for adjusting voltage under load), and spools of some 10AWG Wire. Open the battery, and solder the 10AWG wire to the terminals, dremel out some exit holes for the wires, solder one end of the XT90 connector, then connect some more 10AWG wire to the PSU, use the high load resistors and multimeter to adjust the voltage to around 20 volts under load, solder the other XT90 connector, heatshrink everything, and you're good to go! I did something similar to an older brushed dewalt impact that I got, battery was dead, and I had a spare PSU from my 3D Printer.

As far as upgrading things, used to spend some time in the car audio world, they would use massive 3000w contious converters to run some of the display setups. For the really big stuff, they had a battery bank and several converters to produce 10kw for the minute or so they ran the system for customers. I know most of those were around a thousand a piece, but the power is definitely out there

The wire between the power supply and dummy pack is nowhere near large enough for the current required to mimic a battery

The premise alone warrants a like, even before I made it through the intro

Wow that sketchiness is off the charts, but I can't help but love it. A true hold my beer situation

I really hope you do this again with more power!

One of the reasons you probably won’t see power supplies like this over 1500W is that the limit for a household outlet is 1500W generally. The actual limit before the cables in your walls go up in flames is 1800 but there’s a built in safety margin incase the cables are a little under the spec

The question on those power supplies is how /low/ can the voltage adjustment range go? Not that I'd have too many qualms about slamming 24V into an 18V tool. But you could take the 125A power supply at 12V, put two in series (assuming the DC rail commons aren't shunted to earth, then some more sketch has to go into that) and have yourself ~24V at 125A, nearly twice as much as you had this time! Maybe it could handle the 1". The alternative could be paralleling multiple 18V or 24V supplies, but since current balancing will be far from perfect, they hopefully protect against backfeeding, then you could parallel them all day long and get some decent-ish performance... But don't quote me on that.

I would love to see a modified impact gun with an upgraded motor and using a VESC motor controller and external power supply. You will be able to get some incredible tourqe out of it until the internal components decide they dont like eachother anymore

Saw the title, said “oh god.” Out loud. And here I am. Hoping you didn’t come close to dying too many times.

The 'for science" series is amazing

It's a switching powersupply! Either get a decent capacitor in line, or get a transformer based supply capable of large current spikes (an old amplifier powersupply section would be perfect 😉)

Adding a large capacitor inside the old battery housing would drastically improve performance, imo. Just make sure to add a series inrush current limiter to prevent the power supply from frying itself at startup. Also, a latching power connector would probably help. Additionally, he had a good idea when he used multiple wires on the power supply output, but even better would be carrying all 3 pairs all the way to the battery housing rather than just joining them halfway up. So yeah, maybe hack in a 6 position connector directly on the battery housing connected immediately to a big ass capacitor via an ICL

I would do thicker cables for sure and try to keep them as short as possible. I feel that the pack of power is more the wires then the psu to be honest. I've done something very simular recently for 12v service. I run 6 lights at 100w per light from a computer psu. And I had to do a lot of trickery to get the power from the psu to the lights without seeing a massive drop in voltage from one end to the other. You always want to have + branch both at the psu and one at the draw. Then wire a multimeter in voltage mode across those. And the number your seeing say 1v take that times 2 and you have a 2volt drop from start to end just across the wires. Keep that as low as possible. Good wires to use are jump starter cables with super good termination for cars that are made from pure copper. You want a very heavy gadge cable.

I have a 1.5KW 24V power supply made with two server power supplies in series because I wanted to have a humongous power source if I ever needed one lol. Might try this 😆 Some of the sketchy stuff should be reduced as they're not nameless but made by HP so they should be better isolated/with better protections lol It's also way under-rated, I pulled 2KW from it without it even breaking a sweat, those fans in the back didn't even ramp up. I guess they're used to pull air through a whole server! Maybe I could try with two 1.2KW PSUs to have a 2.4KW 24V unit lol. Could be fun, you'd need thicker cables tho

Just the sort of thing I like to see! Nice!

The inductance of the motor is probably firing off high voltage when the power supply switches on / off an order of magnitude faster than the PWM motor controller in the tool. That's why the keeping the shirt from touching, rubber gloves, etc. were needed. Looks like some voltage spikes backfed into the power supply and saturated some caps, that's why it turned back on when unplugged. Pretty weird and neat. A linear power supply would work much better imo.

Former OSHA guy here. That no no box is awesome. 🤣

The sketch factor here is awesome.

I've noticed some odd stuff with my milwaukee gear like this too. Sometimes if I use a plasma cutter with any cables near my 2767, the light will come on, and less commonly it won't turn off until I pull the battery and reconnect it

What would happen if you were to connect it to the batteries of a semi as they have crazy amp ratings like 1000a and being 24v, bet that would pretty cool.

Make another one, and run them in parallel. Each on it's own breaker

Mad science? I'm totally happy doing this science!

You could use lead acid car batteries.It would do the same thing.The 18V lithium battery is probably a 5S which means the fully charged voltage is 21V so you could probably get away with two 12V lead acids if you dont charge them to 100% . The only concern is the input capacitors in the tool might be rated for 24V max which means it will blow up if you connect two 12V batteries

Just use 3 deep cycle golf cart batteries in series. The voltage is about right and you’ll have more than enough amps. You also won’t electrocute yourself 😁

That was Sketchtastic!

Put the whole contraption into a Milwaukee bag with some neat I/O plugs on the outside with maybe a computer fan cooling the inards.

I FINALLY just noticed that your logo has TTC on the impact wrench handle. 😆🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Corded cordless tools. What a time to be alive.

I don't know why the seller is calling this a transformer. It is a switching power supply. Switching power supplies are good at maintaining their output voltage regardless of the input voltage or the load. A transformer takes ac in and provides ac out. A linear power supply uses a transformer and adds one or four diodes to turn the ac to dc, then uses a beefy capacitor to smooth out the ripples from the ac to dc transformation. This switching power supply is a lot more complicated than that and why it can deliver constant voltage. The down side is that it is current limited by the design of power supply. That is probably why it worked so well with the smaller tools and not so great with the big one. You will need a bigger output power supply to run the big tool. Or just use the right battery.

with brushless tools your limit will be the power transistors inside the tool. but you could take 2 car batteries and produce 24 volts . those that claim 400 cold cranking amps. then use #2 welding cable. or try 3 golf car batteries for 18v. plenty of amps and no shutting down of the power supply .

As others have said a PSU with remote sense lines would be best, a nice 3kW unit with some thicker cables. This sort of thing would be ideal for a battery powered chopsaw when it's sitting in your workshop - You can still use it out and about on battery, but when you're home you can just plug it in and not worry about batteries.

..buy old server power supplies. They usually start at about 1000W, and you can put some of them in series to get the desired voltage (look on the web how-to and which ones). And they are dirt cheap...

Use a treadmill motor on an impact gun in direct drive, keep the flywheel on.

"Sketchy Facts, with the TTC..." Good times...

Needs a big AF capacitor to try and reduce inrush currents!

My recommendation would be to get you a pair of 12v lithium golf cart batteries and put them in a backpack and wire them up in series. Depending on the brand they’ll typically have somewhere in the 300-500 amp instantaneous (10 second) discharge rating and 200-400amp continuous. So 12,000 watts at 24 volts. I realize fully charged 24v lithium batteries are probably going to be above 30v but you should be safe with that voltage. Any time you let off the trigger there is a pretty significant voltage spike (100v or more on an 18v tool) due to the magnetic field collapsing inside the motor. If it can survive that it should have no problem with 30 something volts.

This made me think about something today. I used the Milwaukee M18 compact and nedded to get into a really tight spot, it would have fit, if it wasnt for the battery. My idea, a separate battery with cord that goes to the machine for those REALLY tight spots.

Keep up the hard work I'm enjoying these videos

The DeWalt 9ah flexvolt battery can put out at least 2460W And the 15ah can do 2982W (based on UWO of their highest output tools). That’s way more than what’s possible with a 15a 120v power outlet!

This is probably why Kobalt added an extra cell for 24v, which gives them the ability to get more power at a lower temperature or have packs using cheaper batteries that still outperform 20v packs. I wish Kobalt would get in gear and be more competitive, or maybe they are focusing all their attention towards flex?

I know that AVERAGE power consumption and INSTANT power consumption are different. Some of the discrepencies that you see with the transformer or DC-DC switch mode power supply vs the lithium batteries could be instantanious discharge rate. We know that just after a hammer blow, there is a massive inrush current as the motor is slowed down and forced to accelerate the hammer again. (You may want to see if you can graph this on an oscilloscope, it's pretty neat). And Inrush current spikes when you put a load on an electric motor. If the power supply is outputting less wattage but shows to be comparable to a lithium cell you calculate to be discharging at a higher wattage it may all be in discharge rate. Capacitors have a much higher discharge rate than lithium cells. So the brief acceleration between hammer blows is possibly kicked into high gear with the excessive current on tap with the power supply's pretty large capacitor bank. That being said, it would be neat to prove/disprove this theory. One easy way to do this would be to get a 3rd party milwaukee battery power adapter (the one that gives you leads to power random stuff with your battery) and mix it with that cheap battery used to pipe the pixies into the gun that you used with the power supply, and install a couple farads of super capacitor in parallel with the standard milwaukee battery. This will average the battery output so the motor isnt requiring it to output pulses of high current, and let the supercap handle that load. That's what they are designed to do afterall. You may just stumble on to a mod you can install internally in the handle of these guns that will significantly boost their performance!

Between this and the gas powered impact, can't wait notification for TTC "Rolling Coal with a Turbo Diesel 1" Extended Anvil". Might as well go ahead and start converting your charts to yard-lbs boys.

Perhaps try some car audio supercapacitors, they should be able to deliver everything you need

It would be cool if you got a live voltage reading while doing the tests and then overlaid the voltage drop over the torque charts as you did each test. Also you could try wiring up 2 batteries in parallel with a cable tether going up to the tool since the load an corresponding voltage drop would then get split between them. Or do 5 batteries. It could perform with even less voltage sag than the wall powered contraption, but we'd need that live voltage measurement to be sure

We’ve gone full circle, wired, cordless, and now wired 😂😂

big fan of the channel, i would like to see 12v impact drivers tested across brands for those of us looking to reduce bag weight while still getting those beans

you need to parallel the battery and the power supply , that should supply all the current the motors need. then monitor the voltage drop , if any , to see if there is any more that could be gained

I'd like to see these folks measuring amperage as well as voltage.

2 gauge cables soldered to the tool running to 2 car batteries in series for 24v & unlimited current

Check out hlg power supply. It’s what they use to power grow room LEDs. Constant current or constant voltage. 😉

Kinda related. My M12 stubby impact lights up sometimes with just a slight touch after being left alone for a while. Even a bang on the bench will do it