Pete, my brother in law has a furniture factory and he buys his power tools from Aldi!

His attitude is they have a lower cost of ownership, buy a few and bin them when they wear out. He reckons some of them have outlasted Makita tools.

I did a battery pack teardown on the Aldi Workzone battery packs when I was designing the Installmate and I found that the Workzone batteries were quite well designed, with cell monitoring and balancing electronics in the battery pack. This is unusual, Makita does not have this. The Workzone batteries have worked well for me...

Ian,
Hi Ian. I don't really have a use for cordless power tools, I have tons of corded tools which are old school Japanese and I have some nice Fein and Rupes I use for very fine sanding of veneers. The reason I have those is they leave no sanding marks on veneer as cheap Sanders do.plus I use to use them to spray cars too for the same reason.
I'm just old school.
Hope your both well down there and dodging the bug.....pete

The house seemed much smaller

I know that feeling. A while ago I was showing some friends the house that I was raised in until age 10. I mentioned the big back yard with couch grass that I had to mow with the Atco. Looking over the back fence now I see that it wasn't that all that big -- although bigger than many blocks these days.

I bought a 24V battery drill from Aldi several years ago,it gets a lot of use and has heaps of torque if a drill jambs in a hole it nearly breaks my spindly wrists it is excellent . However They are now 20 volt so if the battery goes I won't be able to replace it.

With Dewalt, they've had many battery form factors over the years due to there being at least three types of battery in their range - NiCad, NiMH (also known as Nano, to them) and the latest Lithium Ion ones and none fit into each other's drills without purchasing an adaptor. Then there is the range of voltages, 9.6, 12, 18 and 36 to start with and now I think they've settled on two voltages, 18 and 54 and the 54 volt ones will work with 18 volt tools. I have a 54 volt baby bench saw, made in Taiwan, not China and the rest of the tools are 18 volt, so there is a degree of standardisation. 54 volts is 18 x 3, so I am assuming the 54 volt pack runs its cells in parallel when in an 18 volt tool or in the charger.

One of my drills is a non-hammer job and it has three mechanical gears as well as variable speed trigger. It has a super low down torque that Hulk Hogan would not be able to stall the chuck in low gear. It's also the oldest of my Dewalt tools and still runs. It's probably 15 years old.

One day I'll lay all those tools on the floor and snap a photo. The only 240V tool I have is a drop saw.

In reality I think all those tools feel a bit unloved. As I am mainly an office worker these days, none get regular use.

Hi Brad ,,, Yes mine is the latest Lithium Ion 18 vold hammer Drill , Today I did a bit of work on the shed just to test the new Drill out ..Yeah ,It all worked fine ... On the weekend I will get stuck back into it ... Pete