Garden Railway Forum

My 40 y/o Minicraft drill has bitten the dust this afternoon and I'm after suggestions to replace it?

My first thought was Dremel but they don't appear to do any drills with a chuck, I can only find them with collets? The same applies to Proxxon.

I've looked at MFA/Como and I think they might be OK but although motors etc are available via retailers, it appears that the drills have to be obtained direct and they have a complicated order procedure.

There are of course countless Chinese models on Amazon & Ebay but who knows how long they would take to arrive at the moment.

Plus I don't really want cordless one because you can guarantee the battery would be just about dead every time I needed to use it.

Any ideas guys?

You can get a chuck to fit the Proxxon mini drills. I have several Proxxon drills and they have all served me well. A couple of years ago I made the mistake of buying the Dremel battery powered drill - turned out to be really cheap and nasty quality.

Hi Phil,

I use a Challenge 'xtreme' cordless 10.8v Lithium Ion cordless drill for little jobs. I have never gone to use it and the battery be depleted and I only charge it on an adhoc basis.

It is easy to fall for 'Brand Belief' when these tools are only used for hobby purposes.

You can also get a Jacobs chuck for the Dremel.

philipy wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 7:00 pm My 40 y/o Minicraft drill has bitten the dust this afternoon and I'm after suggestions to replace it?
My first thought was Dremel but they don't appear to do any drills with a chuck, I can only find them with collets? The same applies to Proxxon.
Plus I don't really want cordless one because you can guarantee the battery would be just about dead every time I needed to use it.
Any ideas guys?

My Minicraft was old (i bought it for use on my 009 layout and stuff) when it gave up and of course I'd bought all the attachments for it so it was a serious need for a more robust tool that got me to bin the old stuff and go with the Proxxon. Not had any problems with it and it doesn't cut out half way through a job.
For the big drill world I've gone for battery powered Milwaukee. Not the cheapest but I'm replacing a lot of my mains powered stuff

Thanks guys.
I did a lot of looking at other modelling forums yesterday evening and the general consensus all round seems to be Proxxon so I shut my eyes and pressed "Buy" this morning!

As for the chuck point, when I looked more closely at their paperwork I realised that there are 3 different models on the same sheet with only minor differences to the part number ('60', '60E' and '60EF') with and without a chuck.

Or this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B001JDGMGS/ ... B008ETGPOY

What did you buy in the end, model number?