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I own a lot of Bosch power tools but this one is a real clunker. After returning the first one and burning out the second, I disassembled it and the wire clip to the field coil was completely burned out. I burned out two of them on one day while drilling about 12 lag bolt anchor holes in concerete with a 3/4" Bosch masonry bit. Total time on each drill was probably under two hours. Clearly this is a design flaw with much too small a connector to handle the current this thing draws under load. Powerful, but useless for more than a few minutes work at a time.
The reviewer below seems to me to be a hired marketer. After the warranty expired (No Bosch standing behind it), the drill just quit going in forward - it will run all day in reverse, which isn't much use. I owned this drill for about 1.5 years. In that time, I used it to drill somewhere less than 10 holes - all less than 1/2" in diameter into ordinary concrete. Since the cost to repair it, while out of warranty, is darn close to the cost to buy a new one, I have decided not to repair it. Since I started having problems, I have found a number of reviews and web pages of people complaining about the electrical problems of this drill.
I bought this drill at Lowes with a pricematch to Amazon.com's price because I couldn't wait to receive it through mail. You have to use a key to open and close the chuck on this drill. This drill seemed to drill about as well as my friends Hilti which I used on my house before.Pros - Good performance for the price.
I used the drill to drill a 6" diameter circle of holes through brick and mortar so I could chisel out a hole in my wall to run a kitchen vent. The drill is good looking unlike some of those ugly looking Hitachi tools. I bought a 5 pack set of the Bosch blue granite drill bits to go along with it.
Comes with a box to keep the tool and masonry bits. The drill went through like a knife through butter. I had such a hard time trying to get this job done with a regular Craftman C3 cordless drill with cheap masonry bits.
Cons - Does not have the quick release chuck that my friend's Hilti has. Not a big deal for me because I do not regularly use this tool but if I was doing this regularly I would have bought a drill which has "click" chuck which does not need a key.
The side handle may be useful when drilling a lot of holes at one time but for me I do not bother. I am really pleased with this product. The chuck key is huge. One of the first holes I drilled in concrete was drilled too deep as it went so fast. The depth guide vibrated out so I tossed it. It is great to be able to actually wrap your hand around the key. The hammer drill comes with a nice case which has a place for a lot of drill bits.
For the last 3/4 inch hole I used a bit made NOT by Bosch and the carbide tip chipped badly on the second and third holes. Needed to make 3, 3/4 inch holes 4 inches deep in a concrete slab. I mention the age because as concrete ages it continues to harden. Then drilled it out to 3/4 inch in steps using 1/8 inch larger drill sizes. Sure a Hilti would have done a hole in 30 seconds and it should for what it costs. This drill worked fine using Bosch Blue Granite carbide bits.
The Bosch bits took it all in good shape. A 60 year old concrete slab. Caused by the hard aggregate in the slab concrete. I first drilled a 1/4 inch hole. That hole actually was the slowest hole to drill. Probably took me 10 minutes each hole because of all of the bit swapping.
Other choice was to rent a Hilti for about half of what the Bosch cost.
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