3D Printed Drill

Vision

The USA alone throws away at least 2M broken cordless drills per year (see market research below, and develop the market research further by contacting sources). A lifetime design, modular, 3D Printed cordless drill is a perfect solution here, and builds upon the current 3D printing craze.

Requirements

• Made of 3 main modules:

• body
• battery interface to connect to any existing battery pack
• battery pack

Problem statement - drills, and especially cordless drills, are throwaway devices. They break and you can't fix them readily because they are not appropriate technology. Here we design the world's first appropriate technology cordless drill.

The goal is to select an appropriate @Depth of Modularity to make any cordless drill motor, battery, speed trigger, gear set, and Chuck interoperable with any other.

This converts any drill to one about 10-100 times cheaper (lifetime extends from 1 to 100 years, and cost drops from 100 to about 50 for a professional grade drill - for the initial purchase, so all things considered, the open source version is about 100x cheaper over the lifetime.

Requirements

• Modular Architecture
• Motor, Gearbox, Clutch, Battery pack, Charger, and Trigger are sourced components off shelf.
• Initial is clutchless, later phase includes clutch - mechanical or electronic (current limiting)
• Professional grade - 18V or higher
• Based on a widely accessible battery pack

Hacking Requirements

• Afteropensourcemarket battery adapters - allow any battery from any other drill to be used.

Later Phase Requirements

• Deepened modularity architecture
• Open source drill motor, and gear box, etc
• Battery pack is modular, and battery build is modular - made of common available cells + electronic, instead of monolithic.
• Modular gearbox means any amount of torque can be generated.
• Different toolheads, including hydraulic high pressure pump for dump trailers, jacks, etc.
• Battery pack is stackable - 18 or 36v battery if one or two modules are used

BOM and Parts Extraction

• 57 teardown 18v motor - [1]
• 3D printed battery holders - [2]
• extracting a gear motor from a drill - [3]
• Making a hub for a cordless drill - [4]
• Good video of extraction for a robot. There are standard motor sizes that can be used. Clutch consists of ball bearings that are pressed down with a spring which catch on a motor disk. [5]
• 3D Printed Gears - [6]
• Standard Motors - 550 size motor.
• Standard gearboxes - Dewalt example - [7]
• Standard chucks

Market Research

• Market share report - [8]
• Harbor Freight recalls 1.7M cordless Drill Master drills -[9]
• The two above imply that there is at least 10M cordless drills sold in the USA every year, assuming the 1M is all that Harbor Freight sold (gross underestimate). That is about a $1B market in the USA alone, or 6B globally.

Lifetime of a Cordless Drill

• 1-2 years in a contractor scenario, check out the guy who spends $5k/year on drill replacements for 40 cordless drills/saws - [10]
• 4 years, woodworking business - [11]

Links to 3D Printed Cordless Drills

• Small one - [12]
• Stratasys - [13]
• Taking a DC motor out of a cordless drill -@[14]
• Alibaba cordless drill motors - [15]

Links

• Useful 3D Prints