I got this a while back as a Freebie when I purchased the Bosch Bull Dog Hammer Drill. I thought I would write up a quick review on it.
The Bosch DMD4 is digital multi-detection tool. It is designed to locate different types of metal, ferrous and non-ferrous. As well as live electrical wiring and wood studs. Bosch claims it can detect wood material under drywall and other substrates up 3/4 thick. Ferrous metals as deep as 4″, 3 1/8″ deep for non-ferrous metals, that includes materials like concrete.
This unit comes with a soft carrying case with a Velcro belt hook for easy portability.
Bosch designed this unit with a soft rubber grip around the entire unit. This makes it easy to grip/handle, and should help prevent damage from short drops.
The Bosch DMD4 will accept a rechargeable 9v battery, or a standard 9v battery. Bosch built in a battery life bar on the LCD screen. When your battery juice becomes low the battery life indicator will start flashing, indicating you have about 10 minutes of continuous use before the battery dies. Bosch Also claims you will get approx. 1hr of continuous use from a standard alkaline battery until the battery goes dead.
The DMD4 comes with an easy to read LCD screen with plenty of icons showing you what’s going on. The DMD4 also includes an indicator ring that will illuminate either green or red, as well as a audio tone that can be turned on or off. The indicator ring also doubles as a center marking point.
You can easily mark the center or edge through the indicator ring with the built in pencil. This is a handy additional feature, especially for people like me who can never find a pencil.
The DMD4 has 4 operating buttons, an on/off button, wood mode, metal mode, and a zoom button.
The zoom button is used in the wood mode to find the center of the wood stud. The zoom feature can also be used in metal mode to pinpoint the edge or center of smaller metal objects. This is a particularly nice feature to have when scanning deeper embedded metal objects. Note: “When a metal item is much narrower than the SENSOR area, the maximum signal might be displayed when the item is just under the left and right of the center hole, rather than the center of the hole, especially if the item is near the surface.” This is one feature I didn’t particularly like. It will take some getting used to in order to figure out if your scanning a metal object smaller or larger than the scan surface area. The DMD4 also includes a live electrical wire indicator; it works in either wood or metal mode and automatically notifies you when you are close to a live wire. The live wire indicator icon also has a strength bar so you can pinpoint exactly where the live wire is.
Overall I like this unit; it’s a little temperamental but works excellent finding metal, and live wires. This would be an excellent choice for the woodworker running reclaimed lumber through a planer. It will find even the smallest bit of metal. I’d probably recommend a basic unit for finding wood studs. I had a lot of problems finding the same stud on a precise continuous basis, and I knew where the stud was.
This is a good tool, known as the DMF10 Zoom in the UK. But, there were a lot of complaints about it, most of which Toolstop did their best to answer. Mainly user problems or people not reading the manual. See http://www.toolstop.co.uk/blog/2010/01/26/bosch-dmf10-zoom-detector-what-do-you-think/ and http://www.toolstop.co.uk/blog/2010/01/29/679/
But, Bosch recently released the new detector which seems so much better, we did a review and video here http://www.toolstop.co.uk/blog/2010/11/17/boschs-new-multi-material-detector-gms120-professional/
Hi, I do have the newer model, GMS 120, and it was priced at 59.9? from CPO Bosch. It was tricky at first but when you use it after awhile, it is much more precise than those cheaper models.