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Please note: Since this review was
published, Global Machinery Company (GMC) has gone into receivership and
is no longer operating. As such, spare parts or technical support cannot
be obtained directly through them. Their website at www.gmcompany.com
appears to still be available online and offers some product information
and manuals but contacting them will receive no reply. Note that
OnlineToolReviews.com does not work for GMC, nor do we offer any support
or spare parts for their products.
Do these new tools from GMC mark the end of conventional
cordless battery tools?
What am I talking about? Capacitor Cell Batteries of
course! But why do you need a new battery technology? Well, Lithium Ion
batteries are pretty good, and some can be recharged in 15 minutes. But
what about a battery that can be recharged from empty in just 45 seconds,
and perhaps better yet, may have unlimited cycle life with no issues with
memory effect?
These are the advantages on offer with capacitor cell
technology, and this technology is included in GMC's new FlashCell Cordless
Screwdrivers.
Traditional Batteries vs Capacitor Batteries
Now, I don't claim to be an expert in the field of electronics or
battery physics by any means, so take from this only what you will. But
traditional batteries, like NiCad and Lithium Ion that we use on most cordless power tools
today provide energy by means of a chemical reaction. This allows the
battery to store a good amount of energy and provide good output power.
The downside though is that eventually these batteries lose capacity
through continuous charge and discharge cycles. Eventually the capacity is
such that the battery becomes useless at storing power and must be
replaced. Each type of chemical battery has its own set of pros and cons
too. NiCads have a supposed memory effect whereas Lithium Ion does not.
Lithium batteries also have a longer shelf life with lower self-discharge
than NiCads.
Capacitor batteries on the other hand do not use a chemical
reaction as the basis for producing power. Instead, capacitors have two
metal electrodes which contain an electric field made up of charged
particles between them. The issue with this in the past has been that the amount of
"charge" you can get was basically proportional to the physical surface area of
the field, so for a capacitor to deliver the same amount of charge as a
normal "chemical" battery, it would have to be quite a lot larger. Imagine
a capacitor battery the size of a small pancake compressor hanging of an
18v drill! Not very practical to say the least. The answer to solving the
size problem is to greatly increase the area of the particle field without
increasing the size of the capacitor. How do you do it? Well, apparently,
you insert a lot of very small fiber-like tubes that dramatically increase
the surface area of the space they are contained in, and hence, you have
much greater surface area and more electrical capacity (charge). This is
the newest advancement in capacitor cell technology, and it is a
revelation that may see many of the old battery technology issues solved
once and for all!
With that said...
The technology is yet to fully develop in the consumer tool market to
the point where capacitor cells are available mainstream in cordless power
tools or other electronic devices, but things are advancing extremely rapidly
and GMC has hopped onboard the capacitor cell train. Both the
FQC54V and PFC46V cordless drivers we are reviewing here implement this
capacitor technology, and interestingly, they offer quite competitive
performance in comparison to chemical cell powered tools of the same
type, but with all the benefits that capacitor cells offer that chemical
cells simply can not.
GMC FlashCell Cordless Screwdrivers
I will review these two drivers together as their features and
application are mostly the same. The FQC54V model offers 5.4v of power in
a straight barrel drill design. The PFC46V model offers 4.2v of power in a
more "drill-like" pistol grip design. Both tools have in-built capacitor
cells and come boxed along with a FlashCell charger for very rapid cell
re-charging. Both drivers feature a standard 1/4" hex bit chuck that the
various driver bits simply slip into. They hold securely and I have not
had one fall out to date. Because the drivers only rotate at a
slow speed (220 RPM for the FQC54V model and 170 RPM for the PFC46V model)
and are single speed with no variable speed control or clutch for torque
settings, they are not ideally suited for drilling tasks. But if you do happen
to have some hex shank drill bits, you can use these drivers for very
light duty drilling in thin materials. Drilling is perhaps best utilized
for light craft work in cardboards, styrofoam, thin plywood or balsa wood
because of this. However I have used these to drill through thin
fiberglass too without any drama. They
will even handle hardwoods because they have quite good torque for their
size, but drilling in these harder materials will be slow if using
anything larger than a 1/8" drill bit. But
essentially, these are best suited as screw and nut driving tools. You can
drill with them if you have plenty of time to spare.
The FQC54V FlashCell Cordless Screwdriver in charger.
Each FlashCell driver comes with its own rapid charger and
there is a set of small hex driver bits onboard the charger to get you
started. The cordless drivers simply drop into the charging slot (they can really
only go one way) so it is very difficult to get the polarity wrong. Plug
the charger into the mains outlet and switch on. On the PFC46V charger
(the pistol grip driver) several red lights indicate the tool is charging,
followed by a green light which illuminates when charging is complete. How
long does a full charge take... Just 45 seconds! You might think I am
joking, but no! 45 seconds and your tool is fully recharged and ready to
go again.
The FQC54V charger is slightly different in design and
charge indication. The barrel shaped driver slots into the charger only
way way for ease and it locks into place while charging. To remove it from
the charger you press the yellow lock release button which releases the
driver and allows you to remove it from the charging base. This charger
has no onboard lights for charge indication, but it has something even
better. Onboard is a power gauge indicator. When you drop the driver into
the charger, the needle on the power gauge will automatically show you how
much charge is left in the tool's capacitor cell. Additionally, as the
tool is charging, you can see the needle rising as charge is added to the
cell. Once the needle reaches the top of the gauge arc (where the "Full"
label is located) the tool is fully charged ready for use once more. And
how long to charge this tool? 90 seconds! Yes 90 seconds is all it takes,
and I timed it too from a dead state and it took 92 seconds to be precise,
but nonetheless, extremely fast! It should be noted that this tool stores
twice the capacity of charge and hence why the recharge time is longer.
There are no issues with memory effect with this type of
power cell so you can charge either driver up to full no matter what its
current state of charge is. This means that you may only need to recharge
a driver for 10-20 seconds before you head off to complete your project if
it is already partially charged.
But what about the cell capacity? Well, I don't have any
small comparable 4.6v or 5.4v drivers to directly correlate so I will only
be guesstimating using my experience in the past with other similar
battery powered tools. But I will say that these tools will run for about
60-70% of what a comparable chemical cell battery might last. They
certainly would not seem to outlast a comparable chemical battery driver,
but heck, if you can recharge them in 45 or 90 seconds from dead flat,
that perhaps becomes almost a non-issue, except for convenience sake.
These drivers are designed for quick charge and use cycles. Whenever you
need them you can grab them from the shelf or cupboard, quickly charge
them up and be ready to go.
The PFC46V model in charger base.
In terms of torque, both drivers exhibit quite a bit for
their size. Numerically, they rate at 4.5Nm and 6Nm which may not sound
like much, but the lack of a clutch that slips means you have to grip
these tools firmly as they will invariably work your wrists as the screws
bite into the material they are being used upon.
Both drivers feature forward and reverse gears with the
PFC46V using a traditional drill slide switch for direction selection
while the FQC54V has separate forward and reverse trigger buttons.
There would be no fatigue issues using these tools all day because they both
weigh well under half a kilogram each.
The pistol grip PFC46V has a two position rotating head for
versatility (so it can be adapted into more of a barrel shape) to get into deeper areas, but the drill can still be used
at any angle between those two positions if needed. The FQC54V has a fixed
driving head.
In Use
So, what can these small, light weight drivers be used for? Well, I
have used them both in the workshop successfully to drive 8 gauge and
smaller woodscrews into most woods, although pre-drilling is definitely
required to drive them all the way in except when driving into softwoods. I do a lot of computer repairs
involving fixing and releasing a lot of computer case and component
screws, and for this task, these drivers are perfectly suited. The same
goes for the majority of electronics work or case work involving smaller
machine screws.
Around the house these drills come in handy for removing
and inserting hinge screws for cupboards and doors, lock fasteners, or for fixing curtain
rods or vertical blind fixtures etc. They can be used on any electronics
or toys that use small screws to secure their housings, and these are the
drills I now reach for first for these tasks.
Essentially, wherever a light duty fixing is found, the
FlashCell drivers will generally be able to handle its release or
re-insertion without any problems. The only thing to be careful of is
stripping the screw heads as their is no clutch on these drills to prevent
this, or prevent over-tightening.
Life Cycle
If my understanding behind capacitor cells is correct, these tools,
barring any actual mechanical failure in the driver itself, should have an
almost unlimited cell cycle life, although I do notice on the GMC website
that the barrel grip model mentions 500,000 cycles as a lifespan. Ahem,
that is quite a few! The average human might be on earth for 27,375 days
in total (for a 75yo) and that means that if that person used the drill
every day from the day they were born until they left this earth, they
would need to cycle the cell 18 times every day to reach that
500,000 cycle figure... so yes, you could call it almost an indefinite
life cycle for the cell.
So far, the
drivers have worked perfectly and continue to recharge in extraordinarily
fast times, and watching that charge needle rise rapidly after plugging
the charger in and flicking the switch on always brings a smile to my
face. In fact, just the thought of the capacitor cell technology evolving
to compete with traditional chemical cell batteries in terms of power
output and capacity is extremely exciting indeed.
Overall
Ok, these tools are not going to replace my 14.4v or 18v cordless
drills for every cordless drilling/driving task imaginable, but of course,
they are not designed to replace those larger drills either. They have
very few practical limitations when used for the type of work they are
designed to do.
Both drivers have met my expectations, with the huge bonus of rapid
recharge times and the hope that the battery cell may never need
replacing, and that alone makes them very attractive in terms of the value
for money factor. The pistol grip PFC46V retails for AUD$99 while the
FQC54V retails for AUD$119.
Review Date: July 2008.
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