At the World of Concrete this year Bosch had several impressive displays inside, outside and even sponsored the tools competition. It was also a great opportunity to get a sneak peak at many of the new tools which will be coming out in the next few months. Some new things in cordless, lasers, detectors, new Power Boxes, innovative accessories and much more. Here are just a few of the highlights; as we get more info and get closer to the launch dates we will circle back and do full posts on each of these.
Litheon 18V Cordless – SDS & Grinder
There were 2 very interesting products I had the opportunity to try out for the Bosch 18v Litheon line. First was the cordless grinder which was set up along with the Makita, DeWalt & Milwaukee cordless grinders. All had cutting wheels and we were cutting a standard size metal pipe. The Bosch held up amazingly well compared to some of the competition, the Bosch was clearly more powerful and with their battery protection system I was assured would far outlast in heavy use. Bosch also had a SDS-Plus 18v cordless drill on hand to demo. I’m not sure how the power/battery compares to 36v 11536-2 ($522, Ohio Power Tool) but it felt very solid and would be ideal for setting tap cons or more heavy duty applications.
New SDS-Max Drill Bits
If you had a chance to checkout our WOC photos, you may have noticed the wood frames that were holding SDS-Max hammer drills & 1.5” bits, drilling into a large slab of concrete. There were Bosch, Makita and DeWalt drills each set up with their own brand of bits. As you can imagine the Bosch combo won every time and this elaborate set up was all designed not to show off their hammers but instead the new SDS-Max bits coming soon. As you can hopefully see in the above picture the new bit on the left has more aggressive cutting features and wider flutes. The Bosch bits started out neck & neck but the Bosch quickly over took the others two as it got deeper. This is because it did such a better job clearing out the concrete debris which is very important for deep larger holes.
Bosch D-Tect150 Multi-Detector
We mentioned this unit some time ago because a similar model (D-Tect100) has been available in Europe for some time. Finally it is coming to America after it clears the FCC; apparently the radars are powerful enough to warrant proving they will not disrupt airplane traffic. This unit is incredibly easy to use and very precise about not only where material is but also how deep, however that accuracy comes at a price, looking at somewhere in the $800 range.
Bosch Power Box 360 – PB360s
The new Bosch Job Site radio was one of the big Bosch product launches of the show; there was even a tower of 40+ of these radios built in the middle of the outdoor expo. I must have seen this thing thrown up in the air a dozen or more times in my few minutes at the booth and it was working great, see video below. It must have seen 100+ drops over the few days so it can defiantly handle regular wear & tear of the jobsite. Some of the really nice features of this unit are 360 sound, subwoofer, 4x 120v outlets + dc car outlet, compatible with iPods / MP3 players / SD Card, and can also run off Bosch 18v Lithium batteries (but not power the outlets obviously). This unit should be available soon with a second model, PB360D version with Sirius Satellite Radio to follow a few months later.
