A hammer drill is a real solution for hard materials such as concrete, stones and bricks. Hammer drill is an efficient drill rather than the regular drill. It can use for driving small size screws with using the adaptor. Considering all facts let’s see, can a hammer drill use for an impact wrench in depth.
In general, hammer drills are not able to use for impact wrenches due to low torque and chuck differences. Hammer drill is with 15-50 Nm torque and lug nuts required more than 100Nm torque. So regular hammer drills are not able to produce that much torque.
Considering all facts let’s see is there any possibility to use a hammer drill for the impact wrenches. So let’s keep reading on until you find a solid solution.
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Hammer Drill Torque and Impact Wrench Torque
When we consider all facts we must check the torque of the tool. Torque is really important for driving screws, nuts and bolts. torque is the rotational force that can apply perpendicular to the axis. Then it helps to drill spinning easily. Impact wrench and hammer drills are spinning tools. But there is a different torque.
Impact Wrench
This is really designed for the lug nut operations. Using epicyclic gear mechanism its torque has increased incredibly. There are tools with more than 2000 Nm breakaway torque that is really massive. When you use a domestic, 400Nm – 600Nm torque impact wrench is really worth it for you.
Hammer Drills
Specially designed for the hammering mechanism. It is a hammer force along the drill bit. That can crush the material into small parts and remove out the debries using the flutes. Drill bits are also specially designed for this task. There is a 15Nm-50Nm average torque. But there are some tools with more than 100Nm torque tools.
According to this, you can see more torque is produced by the impact wrenches. That is really used fully for the lug nuts operations.
Tool Head of Hammer Drill and Impact Wrench
Tool head is the socket or drill bit mount end. Normally hammer drills have chuck and impact wrenches have collet. There are two types of chucks Key and keyless are them. And there is a type of collets also. Regular and pin detent is them.
When you see these tools physically you can observe that you are not able to use the sockets and bits. So we need some adaptors as we used in the impact driver use as a drill.
Sometimes you can mount the hex shank bit to the key chuck. But there are some problems in this process.
How Much Torque Need for Lug Nuts
You must know this before getting an answer to the main question. Normally lug nuts, bolts are with different bolt diameters and there’s. So when you tighten a lug nut you will need to apply the torque. Tightening a lug nut is applying the tensin to the shank by rotating that. When the shank diameter, manufactured material is high, we need to apply more torque. So your self can calculate the torque for any bolt as follow.
There are so many types of lug nuts made with different materials, sizes, threads and standards. So it is really difficult to mention the exact value or date for each nu and plot. You can find it from the Bolt Torque chart. It includes ASTM A307,SAE Grade 2, ASTM A 325, ASTM A449 / SAE Grade 5, ASTM A193 B7 / ASTM A320 L7 / ASTM A354 BC, ASTM A490, ASTM A354-BD / SAE Grade 8.
Download US Recommended Bolt Torque, Metric Recommended Bolt Torque
with considering these sizes and torque we can realize small size bolts (metric size 5-10 mm) and nuts require less torque for tightening or losing. That is about less than 50Nm which is really reasonable. But when you move to a higher diameter you will see there is more than 200 Nm torque is required for operations.
Can Impact Sockets use in Hammer Drill?
So there is a sign, that we can use a hammer drill as an impact wrench. But if you dive in-depth you can realize about the chuck problem, and RPM.
Hammer drills are with high RPM with a chuck. Chuck is 3 pin or keyless. But impact wrenches are with square collets. If you need to connect the chuck to the socket, you will need an adaptor. One end of the adaptor should fit with the chuck and another end should fit with the square socket.
Not Guarantee
When you mount the adaptor hex shank end to the chuck it can be slip while it applying the torque.
Actually, hammer drills are not with impact rate. So impact socket is useless.
Read More About – Can I use Regular Socket in the Impact Wrench? – Solution!
Main Problems
When you use this kind of adaptor and use it for the lug nuts you can observe two things.
01 – Hammer Drill Overheat
You are trying to apply more torque than it has. There is no starting spinning. Hence battery will provide more power for the tool. Hence it will heat and overheat if you keep long.
Read More About – Why is My Drill Overheating? – How I Fix It!
02 – Adaptor Shank Damage
Hex shank adaptor is connected to chuck with 3 jaws. Sometimes these will not fit well. If you have a keyless chuck it will use less. When you apply the load, the shank will slip and damage. Due to hammer drill torque.
Briefly, I can recommend you not to use a hammer drill for impact wrench due to less torque and no proper way to connect the hex shank adaptor to the chuck of the drill. If you use an SDS hammer drill or keyless hammer drill this is impossible.
