ECN Forum Forums Thread Like Summary - Cordless Tools: The Obvious Question

Since my last foray outside the4 USA, cordless tools have really made their mark.

Here the primary brands are (A-Z) DeWalt, Makita, and Milwaukee. Less common are Bosch and Ryobi. Store brands include Rigid (Home Depot), Hercules (Harbor Freight), and Kobalt (Lowes). Specialty makers include Greenlee, Thomas & Betts, and Hilti. Each of these firms uses removable, rechargeable batteries of their own design. That’s is, each brand requires its own charger.

Yet the USA uses an electrical supply different from almost everywhere else. So my question is: How easy is it to purchase chargers (alone) in your country, so I can bring my batteries along?

(Canada is a special case, what with their volts being only 73% of US volts, as I understand things )

A lot of these chargers will have a wide mouth supply that will eat anything from 100 to 250v 50 or 60 hz. You just need a plug adapter. The answer is on the name plate rating.

Yes, that was a joke. I figured that if the Canadian dollar has a lesser value than the American dollar, it followed that the Canadian volt was smaller than it’s American counterpart.

Canada certainly does not use 87.6 volts (73% of 120). As I understand it they use 120v, same as the US. The voltage for industrial lighting though is different to the US.