Ping Gummer: Q on rotary hammers, hex vs. SDS

[Grokman Grokman]

Why did rotary hammer bits go from hex to SDS?
Seems like change for profit$ sake, but maybe there's a real reason.
Other dickless sages, like the worthless Whoyakidding and his castradi posse, are of course free to (worthlessly) chime in.

[Ed Huntress]

They're far more efficient for hammering, because the hammer drill
doesn't have to accelerate the chuck.

There were earlier types of sliding-shank bits, but SDS was the first
one that was really well engineered. They came out at about the time I
started at _American Machinist_, and I wrote a fairly long item about
them around that time, with performance data and comments from pros
who started using them.

--
Ed Huntress

[Gunner Asch]

On Tue, 28 Jul 2015 05:57:20 -0700 (PDT), Grokman Grokman
<fit...@optonline.net> wrote:

>

A very good question indeed. No idea whatsoever. Ive got only (1)
functional SDS drill and it could have been a hex with no issues.

Gunner

[Bob La Londe]

"Grokman Grokman" <fit...@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:9c24b84d-0561-4783...@googlegroups.com...

I wonder. My medium duty rotary hammer is SDS, and my heavier one is spline
drive. My dad's eletric jack hammer (heavier still) is hex.

[Larry Jaques]

On Tue, 28 Jul 2015 10:05:58 -0700, Gunner Asch <gunne...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Dunno. I've never had an SDS driver. It may have been for the
retention, though. How are the hex bits retained?

--
My desire to be well-informed is currently
at odds with my desire to remain sane. --Sipkess