Archived from the Tools In Action forum (Milwaukee). This thread is read-only.
Milwaukee announced MX Fuel, a new cordless platform for light equipment. They are starting out with a power supply, 14″ cut-off saw, breaker, core drill, tower light, and drum snake. The batteries are ginormous, but the goal is to power light industrial equipment, which they are going to great lengths to distinguish from cordless power tools. Thoughts? What would people like to see on a cordless “light equipment” platform?
https://www.protoolreviews.com/news/milwaukee-mx-fuel-equipment-batteries/50750/
Pretty cool
Don’t even want to know what the sticker says on a pack that has 40 3000mah 21700 cells in it lol.
This makes way more sense than flexvolt or other boat anchor batteries that are supposed to also power impacts etc.
Smart.
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Does it though.
EGOs 56 V batteries work good with outdoor power equipment.
I’ve used 8D batteries on boats, dozers, fire trucks, generators, you name it. Very reasonable price. I know they weigh 120 lbs but if my scrawny 180 lb butt can lug them from pickup to dock to work boat to dredge, they are plenty portable and don’t cost megabucks for lithium ion.
Several vendors have pre-orders posted. Looks like the CP pack is $350 and the XC is $600. Light is $3,000 and no price for the power supply. The CP battery is about 6lbs and the XC around 11lbs.
@Jjwillac The power supply and light are not coming at launch.
Bremon wrote:
On 10/31/2019 at 4:07 PM, Bremon said:Don’t even want to know what the sticker says on a pack that has 40 3000mah 21700 cells in it lol.
The cheapest tool kit is $2000
This is total pro grade stuff. It was funny reading the Milwaukee FB group and guys angry that have really no use for it anyways not being able to afford it.
Yep these tools are definitely another step above your 36v and 60v tools pricing wise. There aren’t too many 18v tools I cant “justify” buying if I want to as a construction company owner but these mx fuels are expensive enough you’re going to have to have a specific need to be buying these.
i am a small time contractor in upsate ny. i myself would not have any use for these tools, but love to see this kind of technology come out. these tools are geared toward the mega size construction jobs where i can see these tools being popular. its a small cost for them. these tools are a whole new animal and a whole new battery platform makes alot of sense to me
I’m glad to see they are working on new cordless tools. I’m not sure about the power supply since most tools are cordless now?
It is nice and all but another battery platform from the company who said would use one battery for all your tools. Milwaukee said they wouldn’t need higher voltage or tools powered by two batteries.
JMosher wrote:
On 11/6/2019 at 7:00 PM, JMosher said:I’m not sure about the power supply since most tools are cordless now?
m18/m12 battery chargers.
True. Hadn’t thought of that one.
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Will be interesting to try these. As I said a while ago, 18v doesn’t cut it. I couldn’t even use my M18 grinder the other day without both the 12 and 9ah batteries cutting out after a few minutes of heavy cuttibg rendering the tool useless until they cooled down. My Flexvolt, Husqvarna and metabo never have this problem. Interested to see dewalts response to this. Those packs are huge though!
method wrote:
Will be interesting to try these. As I said a while ago, 18v doesn’t cut it. I couldn’t even use my M18 grinder the other day without both the 12 and 9ah batteries cutting out after a few minutes of heavy cuttibg rendering the tool useless until they cooled down. My Flexvolt, Husqvarna and metabo never have this problem. Interested to see dewalts response to this. Those packs are huge though!
Never had that issue and I’m using the smaller XC 5.0s. Back off on the pressure. I can bury my Dewalt corded grinder too so must mean I need 240 V?
Seriously with ANY batteries we are working with essentially the same 1.2-1.4 V Lithium ion cells. For a given motor more voltage means more torque and possibly speed up to a point. Brushless DC means we either have we apply AC and rectify it into DC on the rotor. Current on the rotor equals torque minus a small counter EMF. Since resistance is pretty much fixed torque = voltage. But I can get a bigger motor which usually means longer fir these kinds of motors where effectively I’m “stacking” motors in parallel on the shaft. This is more efficient than just cranking the voltage up on a single motor. For the battery it has a true resistance limit and a nasty problem of cooling as we convert stored chemical energy into electrons flowing. So at some point if we want higher current we must parallel cells or battery packs. There are issues though with parallel strings the worst of which is stronger ones shift the load onto weaker ones and cause them to fail early so electronics or bigger cells must be involved,
Finally there is the wire/connector problem. The reason that utilitities run much higher voltages on power lines is that for a given piece of wire I hit a thermal limit at some point because losses and heat are proportional to the square of the current. With voltage as long as I can insulate against arcing there is no upper limit so I can put as much power as I want through the same size wire. So with 18 V I have to keep adding more contacts to get higher currents out. With Flexvolt i use the same contacts but jumper (rewire) more batteries in series. But there is one important difference. More batteries in parallel increases the load on the wiring (connections) but not much else. More batteries in series greatly increases the series resistance of the overall battery which limits output current. So I can get more power out if I accept a voltage limit over higher voltages.
Finally we get to electronics. Every power tool has some electronics to if nothing else prevent the tool from catching on fire if it shorts out.’with brushless it must convert DC into AC AND it has the option to easily convert it into higher or lower voltages in the conversion process. This is called an inverter and the reason you can plug a small box into your vehicle 12 VDC system then plug your 120 VAC charger into it.
So it should be obvious…we don’t really care what the battery voltage is up to a point.
So the question is are we going to go low voltage high current or high voltage low current? It changes our connectors. It changes the battery internal resistance. But not the motor side since with brushless we are freed from voltage limits.
If it was so great Milwaukee would have stuck with or increased their 28 V tool line that they’ve all but killed off.
That is exactly their problem isn’t it? I believe they need to draw much more current to get the same power output as in a higher voltage tool with less current. With the same pressure or even more using 36v and 54v, the tools simply carry on working. There are many others who have the same issues I suffered, mostly with the M18 chainsaw on YouTube.
The battery cooling system in Husqvarna is very well engineered. Just about every tool cools the battery when in use. Milwaukee do not even fan cool their chargers and it took forever for each battery to cool down. There is an electronic freak who pushes metabo lihd batteries to over 100 amps and they survive, I’d say mainly due to the increased build quality of the batteries.
You can see tear downs online where Milwaukee have to use beefed up motors and wiring to cope with the extra heat, but the problem is right there, they don’t cope.
Regardless of all of the tech, using the tools is proof in the pudding. I have one of each and the Milwaukee lag behind in every single application at the moment.
Back to the new platform, did anyone else notice the guy using the jackhammer is built like a tank? I wonder how heavy the unit is? Surely they could come up with a slimmer battery pack design!? My electric Husqvarna demo saws are tiny in comparison, I could only see a need for the demo saw if you couldn’t get power at all.. in saying that I’m sure I’ll end up with every tool in the line up, with the exception of the core drilling machine 😆
But wait, Milwaukee claims all you need is 18v . Another battery platform ? 12v, 18v,26v,72v ? …Mx makes more sense then flexvolt? Flexvolt was “ game changing” still is unmatched in power and performance by anyone, ( except the sawzall) no m18 hd is not even close, no the new rear handle m18 is not anywhere near the 577…
light equipment? It does not have the power Or runtime.for light equipment…gonna need generators, which are half the cost of this new battery platform. ….
Always fun to watch Milwaukee with gen 1,2,3,4? Hey buy the 18v circ it’s as good as Dewalt, next year, hey get the new Hd circ saw with the new HO batteries, hey wait next year get the new circ saw….
at least Dewalt engineers tools Once, { flexvolt} that last years and still beat anything out there. …M12 is great , though Dewalt 12v is more powerful and smaller.hope they keep the line going..
If you have both platforms, you can’t really deny the fact that Flexvolt is superior to M18 in terms of power and runtime as well as battery performance.
I still don’t know why the batteries are so large though, unless they just look extra large in the videos it’s hard to tell.
I think the idea is big batteries for heavy equipment. An 18v wouldn’t have enough power to operate some of that stuff
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What the hell is the difference… Smh.. It’s all an improvement and tools to make the job easier.
Never understand it..
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Framer joe wrote:
On 11/21/2019 at 11:36 PM, Framer joe said:Dewalt engineers tools Once, { flexvolt} that last years and still beat anything out there
Not always true. I don’t want to argue about it but the “Nobody competes with DEWALT”, “DeWALT is always the best”, or “DeWALT never breaks or have problems” is kinda getting old.
DeWALT has good tools that beat other tools and DeWALT has bad tools that don’t beat other tools. DeWALT has tools that break and DEWALT has tools that don’t break. Period end of story.
It’s weird to me how fanboyism in tools sometimes rivals what I remember seeing in video game consoles. Some posts here aren’t significantly different from what I remember seeing from teenagers arguing PS2 vs GameCube back in the day.
When talking about light equipment, having an entirely different battery system makes a lot of sense. The amount of energy consumed necessitates MUCH bigger batteries. May as well optimize the voltage used along the way. It just is what it is. I don’t ding Milwaukee on this decision one iota.
ToolBane wrote:
41 minutes ago, ToolBane said:It’s weird to me how fanboyism in tools sometimes rivals what I remember seeing in video game consoles. Some posts here aren’t significantly different from what I remember seeing from teenagers arguing PS2 vs GameCube back in the day.
When talking about light equipment, having an entirely different battery system makes a lot of sense. The amount of energy consumed necessitates MUCH bigger batteries. May as well optimize the voltage used along the way. It just is what it is. I don’t ding Milwaukee on this decision one iota.
The bit wars lol!!
@Jronman…never said Dewalt beats everyone..at everything,,,but..please tell me what tools beat any flexvolt tool except the sawzall???? As for 20v tools , every tool challenge I see has Dewalt 1 or 2 ( or top 3…which is usually their older 887 or 791)..heck even the 996 is still one of the best. The 20v planer, sander, router, grinders, oscillator, etc. are all top 2…
I actually have more money in Red then Dewalt, but I stand by my statements. Dewalt engineers great tools that stand the test of time..they don’t have gen 1,2,3,4..every year.
As a framer they are all abused everyday. Along with makita and Milwaukee…
For yourself and Diy guys any brand will do. But not for professional builders. As I’ve said if I was a plumber I’d buy all Red…fabrication, all Metabo…and Makita is just damn good at everything and has the best impacts…..but you can see for yourself all these companies changing battery platforms to keep up with flexvolt.
Milwaukee just decided to forget flexvolt and jump to “ corporations “ large industrial work..because the 72v line is clearly not meant for regular construction, framing, remodeling…no builder is buying that stuff. But maybe industrial sites would. Elec companies, not sure…
Fan boy? Is it a fanboy if you have less yellow then red, and a boatload of teal. it’s about business, what gets the job done the fastest.and lasts. Definitely not about batteries, cuz yellow are ridiculously priced compared to red…but teal doesn’t have large ah batteries yet.(6ah Max) so that limits makitas cordless line.
@Framer joe if you are talking flexvolt tools that perform towards the bottom of the list then there is really only the recip and gen 1 flexvolt blower. Power wise every flexvolt tool I have used has been great. Feature wise they were nothing special but they got the job done without throwing a fit. I have seen a couple flexvolt tools lose in videos to other tools but who knows how fair the tests were. I personally haven’t had a flexvolt tool go bad but I have had 2 of the 2/6 batteries and one gen 1 fast charger if that counts. Do you think the new 40v SkillSaw wormdrive has a chance to compete with the DCS577? From what I have seen it is basically a tried and true mag 77 with a battery and an updated motor.
Naaa… Not as clear cut as you stated… That’s been your experience, doesn’t mean it’s everybody’s.
I had a boat load of dewalt tools, but burned 5 dewalt cordless impacts up on one job of erecting metal buildings. There were roughly a year to a year and a half old. 5 on one job.. Now I have fewer dewalt tools but since have had better luck with Milwaukee and that’s been my main brand now.
No tool manufacturer is perfect no doubt, but not every one has the same luck (if that’s what you wanna call it) either. Time is money and dewalt began to cost me time and money, made the switch and for the most part glad I did.
While I agree about the comment about the MX line not being necessary for framing or remodeling (for the most part) I’ll certainly be picking up the power supply at some point in the future.
Also glad to see progress in all cordless tools whether it be Dewalt, Milwaukee or whoever!
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Wondering when we will see DeWalts response to this line up. Everything looks so bulky on the MX platform 😕 regardless of whether it is lighter and more powerful, ergonomics play an even bigger part imo.
Jronman wrote:
On 11/7/2019 at 11:06 PM, Jronman said:It is nice and all but another battery platform from the company who said would use one battery for all your tools. Milwaukee said they wouldn’t need higher voltage or tools powered by two batteries.
m18/m12 battery chargers.
Gotta admit that these tools are in a class way above the average ones company’s are producing today. Way more substantial power and tool design/uses. Not for your average contractor small business and I’m fine with that, Milwaukee is obviously tapping into market share absent of this type of cordless innovation. Others will follow but they will likely have the advantage for quite some time and I doubt they did this on a whim. Market research probably identified this gap and the desire so they pursued it and I give them credit for that.
@reddawg60…erecting metal buildings using a impact? Dude, we have tons of steel in our custom homes and no one is using compact impacts..impact wrenches are for Hd work. A compact impact { driver, as it’s called} is not used for that..it’s intended for screws and small diameter , short, lags, truss loks, timber locks,etc…try using the correct tool for the job..
….you must be part of the vcg gang…Milwaukee is a joke for framing…you should be using All impact wrenches…
Hmmm wonder why the Milwaukees held up then… Smh.
These were storage type buildings, lighter weight metal… I’m plenty aware of which tools to use when, but hey thanks for your all knowing wisdom.. Dime a dozen!!
vcg guys… Na, I watch many different reviews on a tool (s) I’m may be interested in.
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Framer joe wrote:
2 hours ago, Framer joe said:@reddawg60…erecting metal buildings using a impact? Dude, we have tons of steel in our custom homes and no one is using compact impacts..impact wrenches are for Hd work. A compact impact { driver, as it’s called} is not used for that..it’s intended for screws and small diameter , short, lags, truss loks, timber locks,etc…try using the correct tool for the job..
….you must be part of the vcg gang…Milwaukee is a joke for framing…you should be using All impact wrenches…
Would a metal fastening screw driver be a better option or are we talking more of a lag bolt type fastener?
Framer joe wrote:
@reddawg60
….you must be part of the vcg gang…Milwaukee is a joke for framing…you should be using All impact wrenches…
LOL!
Does VCG actually build anything?
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Jronman wrote:
Would a metal fastening screw driver be a better option or are we talking more of a lag bolt type fastener?
I think he means a drill/driver. Dewalt, Metabo, and Makita target the builder market. Hands down if you are working in wood they are the go tos for tools. Usually the top tool ends up Dewalt or sometimes Makita. In some tools like a corded grinder Dewalt beats out Milwaukee.
But as an overall tool line Milwaukee is more of specialists tools. They have a lot more tools specifically for plumbers, electricians, and mechanics. Most of my wood working tools are Dewalt or Metabo but those stay at home. No space on the van for all of it. I load them only when needed.
The M12 stubby impact will work on a lag bolt but it’s meant for automotive mechanics. It’s light but I don’t see much point on a builder site when I would be drilling almost as much as shooting screws and tightening nuts and bolts, and cramped space is usually not a factor like working under the hood. The 1400 foot pound impact will probably tighten a lag bolt too without snapping it off and stripping out sheet metal screws instantly if you turn it way down but we use it for fasteners over 3/4”. And the M18 Fuel drill/driver is slower than the Dewalt on high speed for driving screws but if you’re not careful in metal on low speed in drilling metal and it grabs it can easily bruise or break your wrist just like the old D handle drills.
When Milwaukee made the M18 comment they already had experience with the M28 line that they’ve all but abandoned. This was when we had the Kobalt 24 V stuff, Dewalt sells “20V” and came out with Flexvolt. We have seen this before when we moved from 12 V NiCd to 14.4 V NiMh then to 18 V Li
Ion. This was Milwaukee saying there was no technical advantage to higher voltages on a brushless Li ion platform right when Dewalt was claiming the advantages of 60 V tools over 18/20 V. So they avoided doing yet another battery line. At some point way beyond drills and impacts you run into limitations in higher currents and higher voltages just make sense. That’s why large trucks have 24 V battery systems and power companies use thousands of volts on power lines.
The MX line is something really new. It isn’t impact guns. It’s kind of an area where Hilti has a few products but right now most of those types of tools are either corded, hosed, or gas engines. If it works out for them in 10 years it will be like drill/drivers today where the market is dominated by cordless. But the big thing is most of those tools are rented and time will tell whether the rental companies are willing to invest or not, or can get a premium on renting them. It looks like Milwaukee is making products that can do things the others can’t. Like a light plant that fits on a dolly instead of a tow behind or a core drill you can safely use on a ladder instead of putting up scaffolding. These are different products, not
“me toos”. This opens up new markets so it’s not just a substitute. My prediction is like any truly new product demand will be slow at first then either fizzles out or takes off. In today’s instant gratification works though Milwaukee staff need a lot of patience. They need to market to a different crowd and they have to realize that if I’m say a tool rental company I’m taking a big risk on a new product that may have little interest in the higher rental fee, and on whether Milwaukee will fold up shop and skip town in a year if they don’t like how things go.
When SBD comes out with the Dewalt light plant or buys up Hilti, we will know it’s successful. Right now they are too busy putting out red rebranded Chinese tools.
paulengr wrote:
8 hours ago, paulengr said:When SBD comes out with the Dewalt light plant or buys up Hilti, we will know it’s successful. Right now they are too busy putting out red rebranded Chinese tools.
I think we just had to get past the initial Craftsman launch. I think the hype is starting to die down and DeWALT is starting to pick up. We saw some new stuff at STAFFDA and I imagine we will see more at World of Concrete.
I returned a 9ah battery today that I probably used and charged 20 times before it stopped working. I was told that total tools and the like probably won’t end up even stocking this mx range? No one here in Australia can even give us an estimate of when this platform will arrive. You get the excuse of covid when you ask. I’m wondering if it will even survive long enough for it to get here or was it a flop overseas? Any updates on the performance/popularity from the guys/girls using this platform if it’s out in your countries?
Lol… A flop… It hasn’t even been out that long. Obviously not very practical for small job sites tho.
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Almost two months on, I finally received a call from total tools to say my battery claim was rejected lol. Two months and 4 phone calls to find out if my battery would be replaced. It was out of warranty by a few months yet hardly used.. really frustrating, especially with their turn around time. Their Google reviews definitely were not fudged.
On the other hand, we in Australia, miss out on the power supply/generator once again! That was a definite buy which will be no longer. We also don’t get kit options so I don’t see anyone really purchasing this anymore. I tried out the demo saw today, it would have to be the most impractical design I’ve ever held. The handle is literally as if someone took a piece of round tube, bent it at a 90 degree angle and screwed it onto the tool. Unbelievably uncomfortable in the hand, bulky and awkward. Did they not test the ergonomics of a stihl or husky demo saw?? The only selling point I now see for this is the fact that it’s cordless which is why I’d buy it.. but with no kit it works out to almost $3k with 1 battery and charger… My issue is that if the batteries overheat like they do with the m18 chainsaw and 9″ grinder… The tool would be more frustrating than useful. I saw no cooling system on the battery packs?? Really disappointing. On the other note, the jackhammer didn’t look as bulky as it does in videos online although no battery was attached to it.