Welding Tips and Tricks

Bought me self an early Christmas present new 7-9” cordless grinder. I thought it would make my out of shop jobs a bit easier.

The smaller one I’ve had for a year now and would HIGHLY recommend it I love it. It’s taken a fair bit of abuse with no issues at all.

I've got the small one too. It works OK, but in my opinion it is too slow.
Can't really lean on it or the overload trips and shuts tool off.

I really like it for small stuff where I'm one-handing the grinder and holding the part with the other hand.
Otherwise it gets the weld slag brush when I'm portable and the grinding is done with a corded.

If they ever set up a demo booth near me I'll try the big one before I buy it.

How does your big one perform if you lean on it like you have an hour of work left outside and can see the thunder-head coming?

I agree, small one is more for prep work with flap wheel and a slag brush. And decent with a cutoff wheel, it’s not the best for actual grinding. Tho the 9.0 battery makes a huge difference in both power and run time, never mind with this new 12.0. Cordless tool is getting pretty nuts already in terms of power and performance.

You can definetly lean on the bigger one. I put on a 7 inch zipcut (biggest I have currently) and chucked some 5/8 rebar in the vice and sliced off a dozen or so pieces leaning into it. It took about 3 seconds per cut. With a grinding wheel grinding off a weld on a piece of flatbar I honestly couldn’t stall it. Unless you got it under the weld and pushed like you would slicing it off with a cutoff. The only grinder I have to compare it to is a newish (6 months old) corded 6” Makita, and the Milwaukee has more power. Hands down.

I thought I’d drain the battery quick after I opened it since the first 2 charges seem to drain a bit faster in my opinion. Like they need to be broken in lol I know it doesn’t make sense. Anyways I played around with it for about 10 minutes and still had 4 bars left on the battery so I gave up lol. Run time is pretty impressive for a cordless.

It’s comfortable to hold, but a big battery on the back takes a bit of getting used to,that’s a lot of extra weight that cords don’t have.

I think there is a difference between some of the new cordless models of Milwaukee. We have 2 4.5 inch ones in our job box but there is a definite difference between them. One has higher rpm and more torque.I’ve never been a big fan of cordless 4 1/2 inch grinders but I have been impressed by the new Milwaukee ones and the end grinders.