Best of LinkedIn: Digital Powertools CW 03/ 04

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgeier and Frennis based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about digital power tools from calendar weeks three and four.

00:00:08: Frennis is a B to B market research company that supports enterprises in the power tools sector.

00:00:14: with the market, customer and competitive insights they need to navigate dynamic markets and drive customer centric product development.

00:00:22: Welcome to the deep Dutch.

00:00:23: Today we are looking at a really specific snapshot of the industry.

00:00:28: weeks three and four of twenty twenty six.

00:00:30: Yeah.

00:00:31: And honestly.

00:00:32: If you look at the data coming out of LinkedIn during this period, especially around the world of concrete event, it just feels like the industry has crossed some kind of threshold.

00:00:41: We aren't just talking about, you know, Bluetooth connectivity on a drill anymore.

00:00:45: This is, it feels like a fundamental shift in the actual physics of the job site.

00:00:49: It

00:00:49: really is a distinct shift.

00:00:51: I mean, if you just analyze the signal to noise ratio from those two weeks, the message is, you know, it's loud and clear.

00:00:56: Autonomy.

00:00:57: Autonomy.

00:00:57: And I don't just mean robots roaming around though, you know, that's definitely part of it.

00:01:01: I mean, autonomy from the tether, freedom from cords, freedom from gas canisters, and freedom from the physical limitations of the human body itself.

00:01:10: That's a great way to frame it.

00:01:11: We've got a massive stack of updates here, but to keep this actionable for you listening, we've sort of organized the insights into three distinct currents.

00:01:19: First, the heavy iron going electric, and we mean truly heavy demolition tools.

00:01:24: Second, the digital layer.

00:01:27: finally getting its hands dirty with actual job site deployment of AI and robotics.

00:01:31: Right.

00:01:32: And third, a total rethink of the workflow, you know, how we move power and protect ourselves on site.

00:01:38: That structure works perfectly.

00:01:40: Because usually when we talk about innovation and power tools, it's, it's incremental, a slightly faster motor, a slightly better grip.

00:01:46: Yeah.

00:01:47: But weeks three and four, they showed us something completely different.

00:01:50: So let's start with that first bucket.

00:01:51: then, product and tool innovation.

00:01:53: The headline here is the heavy duty cordless revolution.

00:01:56: And I know cordless revolution sounds like, you know, marketing fluff.

00:02:01: we've heard for a decade, but looking at the specs that were released, it might actually be an understatement.

00:02:07: It might be.

00:02:08: For years cordless meant, you know, finished carpentry.

00:02:12: MEP work, maybe some light drilling.

00:02:14: If you needed to break a road, you rented a tow behind compressor.

00:02:17: Of course.

00:02:18: But look at the update from Florian Mayer about the Hiltai TE-XXXXXXXXXXX.

00:02:23: We really need to pause on this because the numbers here are significant.

00:02:26: This is the jackhammer right, the breaker.

00:02:28: It's a cordless breaker.

00:02:29: Yeah.

00:02:29: And Florian highlighted that this machine is clearing one point eight tons of concrete per charge.

00:02:36: Wait, one point eight

00:02:37: tons.

00:02:38: One point eight tons.

00:02:39: Let's contextualize that for a second.

00:02:41: That is roughly the weight of a mid-sized sedan that turned into rubble on a single battery cycle.

00:02:46: Exactly, and that's the key insight here.

00:02:48: It's not just about the power, it's about the logistics of that power.

00:02:52: Florian's point wasn't just look how strong this is.

00:02:55: It was about mobility.

00:02:57: I mean, think about a traditional road crew.

00:02:59: You have a diesel compressor towing behind a truck.

00:03:02: You have fifty feet of heavy rubber air hose snaking through the site.

00:03:06: Creating trip hazards everywhere.

00:03:08: Trip

00:03:08: hazards, the noise, the fumes.

00:03:10: And with this TE- three thousand twenty-two, you just

00:03:13: pick it up.

00:03:14: You pick it up, you walk to the slab, you break it.

00:03:17: When you're done, you walk away.

00:03:18: There is no setup time.

00:03:20: No tear-down time.

00:03:21: The time to torque.

00:03:22: The time from arriving on site to actually breaking ground is practically zero.

00:03:27: And that's where the money is on those short duration heavy jobs.

00:03:30: That's

00:03:30: it, but.

00:03:31: Hilty wasn't the only one pushing this whole Sever the Tether narrative.

00:03:35: We saw a lot of chatter from Alessandro Tondo, John Doherty and Jacqueline Scarra, but the cutoff saw the DSH-Ninehundred Donner-Twenty-Two.

00:03:42: Right, the gas killer.

00:03:43: The

00:03:43: gas killer.

00:03:44: But

00:03:44: is it though?

00:03:45: I mean, we've heard gas performance claims before, and usually the tool just bogs down the moment you hit heavy rebar or deep concrete.

00:03:51: And that's the skepticism Alessandro Tondo was addressing in his posts.

00:03:55: He's claiming this is the specific tool the industry has been waiting for since, you know, the inception of lithium ion.

00:04:00: Okay.

00:04:01: But what interested me more was John Doherty's note on the safety engineering.

00:04:06: Because it's electric, they've been able to integrate a fast blade break.

00:04:11: Explain why that matters.

00:04:12: Why can't a gas saw do

00:04:13: that?

00:04:14: It just comes down to physics, really.

00:04:16: A gas engine has a clutch and a massive amount of rotational momentum in the flywheel.

00:04:22: Stopping that instantly is mechanically violent, and it's incredibly difficult to engineer reliably without destroying the engine.

00:04:30: I see.

00:04:30: An electric motor is direct drive.

00:04:33: You can reverse the polarity or use magnetic braking to stop that blade almost instantly.

00:04:37: So in a kickback scenario, that's the difference between a scare and a trip to the emergency room.

00:04:41: Precisely.

00:04:42: The electrification isn't just about green credentials or convenience.

00:04:46: It's functionally safer.

00:04:48: Right.

00:04:48: Now, we can't ignore the other elephant in the room or the yellow and black giant.

00:04:54: Gewalt came into a world of concrete swinging.

00:04:56: They certainly did.

00:04:57: Arnim Garcia and Jo Landers were showcasing the Power Shift line, and you notice the overlap in targets.

00:05:04: Heavy demolition.

00:05:06: They rolled out a new demolition breaker hammer and a twelve-inch cutoff

00:05:09: saw.

00:05:10: It feels like an arms race, doesn't it?

00:05:11: It does.

00:05:12: Matt Neninga from DeWalt called it a groundbreaking new lineup.

00:05:16: And honestly, this competition is just... It's vital for the end user.

00:05:22: Absolutely.

00:05:23: When you have the two biggest players red and yellow both signaling that twenty twenty six is the year gas dies on the job site, the market has to shift.

00:05:31: It forces rental houses to update fleets.

00:05:33: It forces the grid infrastructure to adapt.

00:05:36: It creates a tipping point.

00:05:37: But does all this brute force come at the cost of finesse?

00:05:40: Because I saw some interesting notes about precision in the data too, specifically around core drilling.

00:05:45: You're thinking of Zachary Major's post on the Hilti DD- one fifty U-twenty-two.

00:05:49: Right, moving that tool to the Neuron platform.

00:05:51: The key metric Zachary shared was thirty percent more work per charge when it's paired with optimized core bits.

00:05:56: That seems

00:05:57: like a really specific detail, the bits.

00:05:59: It is, but it's the kind of nuance people miss.

00:06:01: It's not just the battery, it's the whole system.

00:06:03: The ecosystem.

00:06:04: They

00:06:04: are optimizing the steel.

00:06:06: and the segment geometry of the bit to actually match the torque curve of the electric motor.

00:06:12: That thirty percent efficiency game is pure profit for a contractor.

00:06:17: It means fewer trips to the charger, less downtime.

00:06:20: And speaking of downtime and cost, we have to talk about the war and two war.

00:06:24: Siri Linfors and Natalie Kohler from Bosch Professional made a pretty bold move with their expert line.

00:06:30: Oh, this caught my eye immediately.

00:06:32: They're offering a five-year warranty.

00:06:34: Five years?

00:06:35: Not just on the tool, but on the batteries and chargers, too.

00:06:38: To me, that just signals a huge shift in how we view these assets.

00:06:42: A drill used to be a consumable.

00:06:44: You bought it, abused it for two years, it died.

00:06:46: You bought another one.

00:06:47: Exactly.

00:06:48: Bosch is trying to change the math on total cost of ownership.

00:06:52: If I'm a fleet manager for a large construction firm, and I know my battery replacements are covered for half a decade, my Rix profile drops, you know, significantly.

00:07:01: It turns the tool from an operational expense into a capital asset.

00:07:05: Pretty much.

00:07:06: Before we leave the physical tools, though, I kind of want to challenge you on something.

00:07:09: Christian Reed from Rican Tools posted about their T-One-M digital tape measure hitting a four point eight star rating on Amazon.

00:07:17: The T-One-M, yes.

00:07:18: Okay,

00:07:19: but here's my issue.

00:07:20: I talked to guys on the ground, they hate digital gimmicks.

00:07:24: A tip measure gets dropped in mud, stepped on, thrown in a truck bed, batteries die.

00:07:29: Why is this rating so significant?

00:07:31: You are right to be skeptical.

00:07:33: I mean, the gadget fatigue is real.

00:07:35: That is exactly why a four point eight star rating matters.

00:07:38: It implies they've cropped the threshold of trust.

00:07:41: Okay.

00:07:41: It suggests the hardware is funnily robust enough to survive the environment you just described.

00:07:46: It shows that tradespeople are actually willing to trade the reliability of a bent metal strip for the speed of a digital readout provided it actually works.

00:07:54: So it's a sign that digitization is winning over the purists.

00:07:57: I do so.

00:07:57: Which is a perfect segue.

00:07:59: If the tape measure is going digital, what happens when we give the tools a brain?

00:08:04: Let's move to our second bucket, digital enablement and smart tooling.

00:08:08: The robots are here.

00:08:09: And I don't mean concept videos.

00:08:11: I mean fleet capable machines doing real work.

00:08:14: Jack Butterfield shared a post about DeWalt's downward drilling robot.

00:08:19: It's designed specifically for data center construction.

00:08:23: Why that niche?

00:08:24: Why not a general purpose robot?

00:08:26: Because data centers are the perfect storm for automation.

00:08:29: Yeah.

00:08:29: I mean, think about the architecture.

00:08:30: It's acres and acres of raised flooring.

00:08:32: Right.

00:08:33: You need to drill thousands upon thousands of anchor holes into the slab to support all the racks.

00:08:39: It is a highly repetitive, geometrically simple, but physically destroying task.

00:08:44: It's

00:08:44: backbreaking work.

00:08:45: Literally.

00:08:46: It is an ergonomic nightmare for a human to bend over and drill five hundred holes a day.

00:08:51: Jack Butterfield highlights that this robot isn't just cool, it's a solution to a labor crisis.

00:08:57: It takes the human out of the bending and drilling loop and promotes them to a supervisor role.

00:09:02: The robot ensures accuracy, the human ensures logistics.

00:09:05: And we saw a similar philosophy from Husqvarna.

00:09:07: Kevin McGuckin and Jeff Hilgers were talking about the auto grinder.

00:09:10: Yeah,

00:09:10: I loved the tagline Kevin used, the luxury of more time.

00:09:13: And Jeff Hilgers mentioned showing it to his dad, who's been in the industry for twenty seven seasons.

00:09:18: I mean, that's a generational shift in perspective right there.

00:09:20: It is.

00:09:21: Floor grinding is slow, loud and dusty.

00:09:24: The auto grinder allows the operator to set the parameters and then literally walk away to manage cables, prep the next room or handle the slurry.

00:09:33: So you're cloning your workforce.

00:09:35: Kevin McGuckin put it perfectly.

00:09:36: Yeah.

00:09:37: It gives the contractor two work days in one.

00:09:40: You are essentially cloning your most skilled worker.

00:09:43: That's the productivity hack everyone is chasing, but sometimes the smart part is in a robot driving around.

00:09:48: Sometimes it's, you know, buried inside the machine itself.

00:09:51: You're referring to the Edge AI post from Hans-Michael Kraus at Bosch Rexroth.

00:09:56: I am, and I want to unpack this because Edge AI is a buzzword that gets thrown around a lot.

00:10:00: What did they actually do here?

00:10:01: So Hans-Michael Kraus... detailed deploying a time series model called Tyrex on a Sixtral LX Core X-III industrial controller.

00:10:10: Okay, let's translate that.

00:10:11: What is a time series model in this context?

00:10:14: Okay, so think of a machine operating on a motor spinning, a conveyor belt moving.

00:10:20: It generates vibration, heat, and noise over time.

00:10:24: that is time series data.

00:10:25: Right.

00:10:26: Usually to analyze that data for predictive maintenance, to know if a bearing is about to fail, you have to send all that data to the cloud, have a server crunch it, and send a result back.

00:10:36: Which introduces latency, and if the wifey drops, the machine is flying blind.

00:10:41: Exactly.

00:10:42: What Bosch Rexfrost did is run the AI locally on the machine itself, on the edge, right alongside the standard motion control code.

00:10:49: So the machine is thinking about its own health in real time.

00:10:52: Yes.

00:10:53: Hans Michael Kraus calls it zero-shot forecasting.

00:10:56: The machine can predict an anomaly without ever connecting to the internet.

00:11:00: This is critical for high-speed manufacturing where a millisecond of delay can ruin an entire product run.

00:11:05: That's a massive leap for uptime.

00:11:07: But let's bring it back to the muddy job site.

00:11:09: All this data is useless if we don't manage it.

00:11:12: Greg Bourvinet had a conversation with Hittai CEO Mike McGowan about this exact thing.

00:11:16: This connects the docs, really, between the tool and the business.

00:11:21: Greg noted the focus is shifting to tools that report on their own idleness.

00:11:25: The hoarding problem.

00:11:26: It's

00:11:26: a huge issue.

00:11:27: On a massive site, subcontractors will hide the good tools in their game box because they don't want to lose them.

00:11:33: Of course.

00:11:34: So you might have ten drills sitting unused on the fourth floor while the crew on the first floor is waiting for equipment.

00:11:40: So the tool essentially snitches on itself.

00:11:42: Hey, I haven't pulled a trigger in three days.

00:11:44: Exactly.

00:11:45: It allows the fleet manager to see the actual utilization.

00:11:48: They can redeploy that asset instead of buying more.

00:11:51: It moves the whole conversation from we need more tools to we need to use the tools we have better.

00:11:57: Efficiency through transparency.

00:12:00: And that brings us perfectly to our third and final bucket.

00:12:03: Job site efficiency and workflow optimization.

00:12:07: Because even the smartest robot needs power.

00:12:09: And even the best drill needs to get to the work zone.

00:12:12: Logistics is the unsexy hero of construction.

00:12:15: If you can't move the gear, you can't build.

00:12:18: Simple as that.

00:12:19: And Andre Muheath posted about the Milwaukee Packout Flat Trolley.

00:12:24: It seems simple.

00:12:25: I mean, it's a trolley with wheels.

00:12:27: But the engagement on that post was really high.

00:12:30: Why?

00:12:30: Because it solves the last mile problem on a site.

00:12:33: You park the truck, but the work is four hundred yards away and up a service elevator.

00:12:37: Right.

00:12:38: Andre's point was all about reducing manual handling.

00:12:41: If you can stack your entire workshop onto one rolling base, you've just saved yourself four trips back to the van.

00:12:48: Time is money.

00:12:49: And back health is longevity.

00:12:51: But the bigger bottleneck on these modern cordless job sites is charging.

00:12:55: Everyone has batteries now.

00:12:57: Where do you plug them all in?

00:12:58: That's where Instagrid comes in.

00:12:59: I saw Matt O'Hara and Mark Scott were posting about this.

00:13:02: This is a company to watch.

00:13:03: They are pushing these portable power units with eighteen thousand watts peak power.

00:13:08: Eighteen thousand watts?

00:13:09: That's not a portable charger.

00:13:10: That's a substation.

00:13:11: It's enough to run heavy welding equipment or those diamond drills we talked about earlier.

00:13:16: But Mark Scott listed the benefits that really matter for the modern constraints.

00:13:20: Which are?

00:13:20: Silent running and emission free.

00:13:22: Okay, so that opens up new environments.

00:13:24: Exactly.

00:13:25: If you're doing a fit-out in an occupied hospital or a renovation in a dense urban center with noise ordinances, you cannot run a diesel generator.

00:13:34: You just can't.

00:13:34: Right.

00:13:35: Instagrid solves that problem.

00:13:38: And Matt emphasized their build for rental, meaning they're rugged.

00:13:41: No plant nampies or spill kits required because there's no fuel to spill.

00:13:45: Moving from power to people, let's talk safety.

00:13:48: James T. Strother shared a win for Milwaukee regarding helmets.

00:13:52: Ah, yeah, the Virginia Tech study.

00:13:54: This really validates a trend we've seen for a couple of years now.

00:13:57: The death of the traditional hard hat.

00:13:59: We're seeing those climbing style helmets everywhere

00:14:01: now.

00:14:02: The Type II safety helmet.

00:14:04: James T. Strother noted that the Milwaukee Bolt helmet was ranked as a top performance.

00:14:07: The big difference is the side impact protection and the chin straps.

00:14:11: Right.

00:14:11: If you fall... A traditional hard hat often falls off before you even hit the ground.

00:14:16: These helmets stay on.

00:14:17: It's great to see independent data backing up the design.

00:14:20: And then we have the sci-fi meeting the practical.

00:14:22: Cedric M. Dodd highlighted the combination of the healthy XOT.

00:14:26: The exoskeleton.

00:14:27: Paired with that TE- one thousand twenty-two breaker.

00:14:31: See, this is where it gets really interesting for me.

00:14:33: It's a system approach.

00:14:35: You have the tool, which is cordless and lighter.

00:14:38: Then you have the wearable exoskeleton, taking the weight of that tool off the operator's arms and transferring it to their hips.

00:14:45: Right.

00:14:45: It's not just about getting the demolition done today.

00:14:48: It's about the worker being able to walk upright when they're fifty.

00:14:51: It's

00:14:51: treating the construction worker like an industrial athlete.

00:14:54: Preservation of the human asset.

00:14:56: Exactly.

00:14:57: And speaking of preservation or maybe preparation, Ethan Jones got a really insightful technical post about surface prep.

00:15:05: This was the shot blasting versus grinding debate.

00:15:08: Yes.

00:15:08: He was conducting training with the Husqvarna one ADM shot blaster.

00:15:13: And he made a crucial point that I think a lot of general contractors miss.

00:15:17: If you're prepping a floor for line striping or a coating, shot blasting is often superior to diamond grinding.

00:15:23: Why is that?

00:15:25: I would have assumed grinding makes it smoother, which would be better.

00:15:28: Smoother

00:15:28: isn't always better for adhesion.

00:15:30: But the real issue he pointed out is micro fracturing.

00:15:33: Aggressive grinding can cause these tiny invisible cracks in the concrete surface.

00:15:38: When you apply paint or epoxy over that, it can fail prematurely.

00:15:43: Shot-blasting opens the concrete pores without damaging that substrate structure.

00:15:48: That is a great in-the-weeds detail.

00:15:50: It's not just about having a machine.

00:15:52: It's knowing the physics of the material you're working on.

00:15:55: Knowledge is the ultimate tool.

00:15:56: For sure.

00:15:57: Finally, we have to touch on sustainability.

00:15:59: It wasn't just about efficiency.

00:16:01: It was about the materials themselves.

00:16:03: Patrick Kipscher and Isabel Gola from Bosch shared a pilot project that I think is going to set a new standard.

00:16:09: The recycled drill housing.

00:16:11: Yes.

00:16:12: They produced an impact drill housing made of seventy-eight percent recycled plastic.

00:16:15: And

00:16:16: Isabel Gola's point was crucial.

00:16:17: She said, dare to start.

00:16:19: That phrase resonated.

00:16:21: Yeah, because in engineering, it's so easy to find reasons not to do this.

00:16:25: Will the plastic be brittle?

00:16:26: Will it handle the heat?

00:16:27: Will customers think it looks cheap?

00:16:29: but Bosch proved they could maintain their quality standards without compromising performance?

00:16:34: It closes the loop, decommissioned tools get recycled, and that plastic ends up in the new tools.

00:16:40: So looking back at this snapshot weeks three and four of twenty twenty six, how do we summarize this whole shift?

00:16:48: I think the era of the isolated tool is over.

00:16:51: The job site is becoming a platform ecosystem.

00:16:54: You're not just buying a drill.

00:16:55: You're buying into a battery platform like Neuron or Amshare.

00:16:58: You're buying into a data platform for your fleet.

00:17:01: You're buying into a logistics platform like Packout.

00:17:03: And those platforms are increasingly cordless, intelligent, and really designed to keep the human workers safer and more productive.

00:17:10: The line between digital and physical construction has just, it's blurred to the point of disappearing.

00:17:15: The drill talks to the cloud, the robot handles the repetition, and the human manages the workflow with a digital tape measure.

00:17:22: It's a mature integrated industry now.

00:17:25: It is a fascinating evolution to watch, and that brings us to the end of this deep dive.

00:17:30: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:17:33: Also, check out our other editions on digital construction and smart manufacturing.

00:17:37: Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next update.

00:17:41: See you next time.