Festool TDK Cordless Drills: Discontinued — What to Buy Instead
Festool's TDK line is long retired, along with its NiCd packs. The current range shares nothing with it.
Disclosure:As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. This costs you nothing and never changes which tools we recommend. Read more.
The TDK series was Festool’s cordless drill line from the nickel-cadmium era — 12V and 15.6V versions, sold with the FastFix chuck system that let you swap between a keyless chuck, an angle head, an eccentric head and a depth stop in seconds.
The drills are discontinued and the battery platform is gone. Festool has been through several cordless generations since: the T and C series, then the TXS and CXS compacts, now the 18V line that shares packs with the rest of the cordless range.
What was actually good about them
The FastFix system, and it survives. Festool’s current drills still take interchangeable heads on the same principle, and it is still the best implementation of the idea — an angle head that clicks on in a second is genuinely useful in cabinet installation, which is who these tools were sold to.
The battery problem
NiCd packs from this era are dead or dying, and Festool no longer makes them. Third-party replacements for discontinued Festool packs are scarce and expensive, because the volumes were never large.
A TDK with a healthy pack is a nice tool. A TDK without one is not economically recoverable.
What to buy instead
If you want the Festool system, the current 18V drills share batteries with the whole cordless range including the track saws and sanders, and they keep FastFix. That is the coherent choice for someone already in the system.
If you just want a very good drill, the Makita XFD131, linked below, is a brushless 18V LXT kit at a fraction of Festool money, on a battery mount that has been stable since 2005.