Drills in caves

[Muddyeye]

Hi everyone.

I'm quite interested in drills used in caves.
The reason is simple I use different blasting techniques and for this activities, the hammerdrills arevquite fundamenteal.

I own a HILTI TE6A with Nicad packs.
Now I plan to modífy a HILTI TE10A to lead battery type like in this pic:


Does someone have experience with this modification?

Thanks

[Scott McCrea]

Do you have a better pic? It's hard to tell what is happening there. Can you explain your plans a bit?

[Muddyeye]

Unfortunately I don't have better picture. It is in a French document (SSF)

I only found this site:
http://technology.darkfrontier.us/drilling/hiltirewire/

So the project in shootings:

-Cut shorter the handle of the drill to fit in a high density PE tube.
-put the battery and electronics in a sealed pack in the bottom of the tube,
-add 10m of silicon cable and you have a machine in a tube

It is good for narrow places and surface usage because you only move the drill with a cable. And the lead batteries is cheaper and easily available instead of Hilti batteries. a good choice but I'm not an electrician so I need a bit help. Maybe some of us have done it, not just the French caves....

[Muddyeye]

I finished the drill.
Although I did not cut the handle, and I realized thet it is unnecessary to put in peli or other waterproof stuff.
Now the batteries are in my older equipment bag.

The capacity:
We used it for drilling 14mm diameter and 10 cm deep holes for wedges.
The stone was grey limestone the drilling direction was perpendicular to the structure.
It could drill around 1,8-2,0 m, when I started to feel the weakness of the batteries.
All things considered it is a good choice for secondary drill.
I put 5meters of silicon cable on it.

I'll take some pics to show what have I made.

[Muddyeye]

Looks like that I'm chat with myself.


Does anyone have any idea of the fully charged voltage and the cut off voltage of the original hilti NiCd batteries?

I want to make a discharging unit for it and this informations can be quite important...


Thanks!!!

[Lava]

Where are the pics?

I would have based this project around Li-Ion batteries. Better energy density, smaller, lighter.
In fact, I have considered doing this mod to a great light-duty drill I have, the Rockwell H3:



But then I realized just having multiple OEM batteries was actually a lot more flexible than one giant battery. I could take four batteries on a trip, or I could take just two depending on what was required. That said, they aren't as robust as something that's sealed in a PVC pipe like what you've done.

[Muddyeye]

Could be.
I own 2 drills, the above mentioned Te10A and a old Te6A with Nicd batteries. Now I got a dead battery which will serve as a adaptor for the external lead batteries.

This drills like Rockwell is not for heavy drilling, it is mainly for anchoring, and smaller actions.
I'm not sure that it can drill 10-16mm diameter and 50cm deep holes.

I'm absolutely agree that the NiCd is quite bulky and old stuff in this area. But I do not want to replace the whole system to Lipo.
My family purse is highly against this So I have to look for more handy ways. Like handling and discharging the batteries regurlaly.