If you happen to work in a repair shop or a tire installation center, you may have heard of the electric impact wrench. An impact wrench is a special tool that’s used to tighten or loosen bolts – usually tires. These are also used at construction sites, assembly lines, and other areas where maintenance on heavy equipment is performed.
There are many names for the electric impact wrench – they are sometimes called torque guns, air guns, air wrenches and even rattle guns. There are different types of impact wrenches – some are powered by air and others by electricity. Electric impact wrenches have been gaining in popularity because they are much more mobile over the compressor impact wrenches.
Many people want to know what the best electric impact brand is. The top impact wrench brands are Ingersoll Rand, Skil, DeWalk, Makita, Milwaukee, Hitachie, Bosch, and Ryobi. Impact wrenches are certainly not cheap. You can expect to easily spend between 100 to 500 dollars for an electric impact wrench. The more commercial models that are designed to handle heavy duty work will be pricier than the DIY type electric wrenches.
As far as choosing what sort of impact wrench, compressor powered impact wrenches will give the best power to weight ratio compared to electric or cordless impact wrenches. However, they tend to be less portable.
These days, Ingersoll Rand is getting very good very good reviews on impact wrenches. The Ingersoll Rand 231C ½-Inch Air Impact wrench is sold for about 100 dollars and is top selling project. You might want to look at getting the DeWalt DC820KA Heavy-Duty 18 Volt ½-Inch Compact Impact Wrench as another solid impact wrench. It’s about 250 dollars though. You can look at getting the Hitachi WR18DL cordless electric impact wrench – this runs on an 18 volt lithium battery. If you think that cordless impacts don’t pack a serious drive, you are wrong. This model can crank out over 1950 inch/lb and offers the ½ square drive. You are going to pay more for cordless models, however. This model is about $260 dollars.
The best place to buy electric impact wrenches is online. You can visit the major online retailers to see a huge selection of power tools, including virtually every impact wrench on the market. Online prices tend to be cheaper than offline prices as well. You might be able to find a few sales as well.