We just got back from the 2020 World of Concrete! Every year the concrete industry descends on Vegas to find out the very latest in concrete tool tech.
Our first stop was at the Skilsaw booth, where Craig revealed the second tool to use the TrueHVL battery platform. This, is the all new cordless 10 and ¼” worm drive circular saw. Ever since the 7 and ¼” was revealed, a cordless version of the sawsquatch was easily the most requested tool from our fans. I had a chance to try the saw for myself, and as expected, it felt exactly like a corded sawsquatch, and made quick work of the 4×4 post they had to demo. The all new 10 and ¼” cordless worm drive will be available this October.
Our next stop was in the DeWALT booth, where we met up with our buddy Ricky, who showed off the 4th, and final form of the DeWALT Flexvolt SDS Max series. This is the 1 and ¾” inch Combo hammer. It was the last piece of the SDS Max lineup, where it sits next to the 1 and 9/16″, 1 and 7/8″, and of course the 2”. And for the first time on one of these drills, it has the new DeWALT wireless tool control for auto starting their vacs. They also showed us a few new 12V toys including a mid sized Bluetooth radio, a new LED job light and an insanely fast charger that tops off a 9AH Flexvolt battery in only 45 mins!
Bosch showed up to the World Of Concrete with several new things to show off, many of which focused around Megawatt performance which is achieved by pairing up a new Bosch Core Battery with a Bosch BiTurbo tool. Among those new tools was a Bosch Track Saw with a very narrow track, which we liked quite a bit, and a digital display that allows you to dial in the performance, and even features an ECO mode that will extend your battery life significantly when using the tool for lower demand jobs. Bosch also showed us an all new line of pro level rotary job site lasers, and updated cordless SDS-max drills that take advantage of their new Megawatt performance.
Terry over at the Metabo booth had several new things to show us, including new concrete grinders, and a few new discs with special purposes, like a concrete dado stack that was used to cut chases in concrete for routing cables and pipes. We also got to try this Poly Crystaline Diamond Wheel, used to scrape up paint, left over mastic, or for anything else you don’t want on your concrete. And of course their entire line of SDS Max drills were available to demo, right next to a pair of their breakers.
And finally, we spent some time at the HILTI booth, where we got our hands on the worlds first cordless breaker, and this was NOT a toy. The TE 500 claims to have the same power of their corded breaker, but when paired with their back pack vac, it allows you to easily bring table 1 compliant concrete breaking anywhere on the jobsite. HILTI also announced a few new 12v drills, some unique metalworking tools and a crazy new fastener tracking program, that puts a scannable QR style code on each individual fastener, that ties it to a customer, a user, and even the job it was installed on.
Special thanks to Ohio Power Tool AND SKILSAW for sponsoring this episode!
