The Makita Cordless Angle Grinder – Big Power – No cord!

If you are in the market for a cordless grinder then this may very well be the ticket for you. This is the new Brushless Angle Grinder Kit from Makita. It uses two 18 volt batteries in series for a combined potential of 36 volts and is an absolute power house.

Here’s what comes in the box. For a little less than 400 bucks you get the 7” grinder, two 18v 5Ah batteries, a dual battery charger, one 7” cut off wheel, one 7” grinding wheel, two different size guards, a threaded handle, and of course the large carrying case. In my opinion, its quite a lot of gear for the money.

After unboxing this beast I got it set up for some cutting on a job I had coming up. My unit was delivered without any sort of wheel attached so the very first thing I did was install the cutting guard and the cut-off wheel. The installation of both of those items is made very easy with the supplied spanner wrench and the over-center clamp that holds the guard in place.

The batteries showed up on a full tank of gas as Indicated by Makita’s push button “fuel gauge” on each of the 18 volt batteries.

The charger can charge one or two batteries at the same time and it also features one USB outlet for charging your smaller mobile devices.The USB outlet has a cool little rubber hood to keep debris out of it when it’s not used. Pretty handy. : )

Once it was all charged and set up, I put this monster to work. Right outta the gate it is easy to see this grinder is no joke. It’s on the heavy side in my opinion weighing in around 13 lbs. but is well worth not having to drag around an extension cord. There is a trigger safety lock that gets moved out of the way before you can depress the “go” button which is certainly handy on a tool that can ruin your tool box if the trigger accidentally gets pressed : )

The chicken coop I recently finished made for an excellent first time trial of this grinder. The final details of the coop call for screening the entire thing in wire mesh material and adding a wire predator apron to keep the chickens in and critters out.  Basically, I would unroll the mesh material to length, then use the cut off wheel to blast through the mesh (AKA “harware cloth”). As you might expect, this grinder chewed through the material without grunting whatsoever. The 7” cutting wheel simply cruised right through the material and maintained it’s speed the entire time.

Aside from the screen, I also found this grinder handy at cutting off excess screw material on the back side of some paneling. I ran out of short screws and switched to some 2 inch-ers while wrapping up the details of the chicken coop. Rather than leave little spikes for the chickens to get hung up on, I deployed this grinder to flush cut the screws to the material. Worked like a champ.

The blade guard is adjustable. This worked perfectly for me since I was sometimes using it left handed and sometimes using it right handed. Like with most grinders, the threaded handle can thread into either side of the grinder depending on your needs.

Here are a couple of technical bits worth sharing: The grinder has an internal brake that immediately engages once the trigger is released. If you’ve used a grinder, you already know how cool of a feature this is. A grinder without a brake will continue to spin and spin until frictional forces of the motor and turning assembly eventually slow it down. This can present a hazard since it is very easy to set the tool down wile focusing on other things and not keeping in mind that a nasty little cutting or grinder wheel is still spooling down from 8,000 RPM. This machine only requires about 2.5 seconds to go from full blast to nothin’.

When the trigger is squeezed, there’s much more going on than just a simple on/of condition of the motor. Makita has introduced a type of closed loop feed back system in the power output of the batteries. Put simply, the grinder will adapt to the load conditions you place on it by modulating the power output so that the speed of the grinding wheel stays as constant as possible. This type of technology ensures that battery usage is as efficient as possible and the machine behaves predictably as you drive the cutting/grinding wheel into your workpiece.

So what does it have working against it? Not much really but if I have to put a finger on it I’d say the weight and the fact that it will not stand upright on its own are really the only marks. I suppose there is not much that can be done about the weight if going cordless is the main goal though. The batteries alone have a combined weight of just over 3 lbs. However! If you have a short job and weight is on your mind, feel free to throw in two of the 2.0Ah batteries for an overall weight savings of about 2 lbs. The cage that surrounds the batteries is angled. Seems to me, It would have been an easy choice to square the cage up so that the device could stand upright on a work bench. This would make for an easy grab between tasks. Again, these are very minor criticisms but may hold some value to some of you out there.

All and all I think Makita did a great job on this cordless angle grinder. It’s highly adaptable to a variety of work and easily deployable for those situations where a power outlet is not available. This grinder would go well for a variety of folks in my opinion; property owners, contractors, technicians, auto mechanics, or just a general DIY’er who enjoys going cordless.

That’s all I have for you on this one folks! Thanks for stopping in to learn more. This review is sponsored by The Home Depot Prospective Campaign. If you’re interested in getting your hands on one of these grinders, consider using this link or one from above. Sales through these affiliate links provide a small kick back to me which helps this website continue on. Either way, I appreciate you stopping by to learn a bit more.

Take care and have a great day – April

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