Is this any good? Makita with 18V, 3ah battery, and 101 odds & ends at Screwfix . I’m guessing bigger voltages and bigger batteries are better? Is there much more to considder? Spare batteries are hideously expensive, but I’m guessing a 3Ah battery should last a fair while as most others are under half the size?

Jobs that need doing in the short term:
Drilling pilot holes in carbon fibre and epoxy (I’m guessing my gran and a hand drill would be upto that though!)
Cutting a 108mm hole in some (not massively thick, <5mm) fiberglass (might be more of a challenge), then again I’ve no idea.

lmgtfy

It shouldn’t struggle with the hole saw / fibreglass, if you had to cut 100mm holes all day perhaps, but once in a blue moon no bother

Around the home having just one 3amp/hr battery is plenty. The charger is really fast, you can part-charge too and you get to 80% full very quickly (theres a light on the charger that flags this). The makita 18v range is excellent so theres always the opportunity to add something else handy that you can use the battery with at a later date. People like Axminster do cheaper compatible batteries too

I’m guessing bigger voltages and bigger batteries are better?

240V will be better still. And a shedload cheaper.

Especially if this is your only drill.

edit: this isn’t to say the makita will be bad, I’d say they’re quite good.

240V will be better still. And a shedload cheaper.

True arrund the house, but dragging a lead acid battery and an inverter arround could get tiring after a while, I’ll stick with small batteries :-p

Would a cheeper ni-cad system be better for infrequent use?

Its a great drill. Good price too. No problem with hole saws, I use mine for that all the time; birch plywood can be a pain but that is even true on the pillar drill, fibreglass is fine. It is easily as powerful as a small 240v drill.

Don’t bother with NiCad

I have that drill with 2 1.5Ahr batteries. It is great for general use. Only thing I’d use the 240V drill for now is lots of or big holes in brick/concrete. The Makita has coped with putting 7mm holes for rawl plugs around the house.

Would a cheeper ni-cad system be better for infrequent use?

Only if you don’t have the budgie for a li-ion.

ka-boom, tsch!

Would a cheeper ni-cad system be better for infrequent use?

depends on how infrequent you think that’ll be. Nicad performance trails off with under-use, Li-ion batteries just become bricks, the charger refuses to charge them. Thats why I’d go for just one li-ion battery for home use, and really the smaller the capacity the better, so it gets cycled more often, but you need to guard against not using at all for months on end.

Nicad performance trails off with under-use

nicads can generally be rescued from most states – but might need a reasonable battery charger/cycler to do so

Li-ion batteries just become bricks, the charger refuses to charge them

LiIons are fussy little shites, TBH

best “value” from liion comes from constant use, ie mobile phone

stored correctly they have a long life, correct being half charged and at about 7 degC. “needs” regular (monthly?) checks on charge state and possibly a bit of a charge to get back up to half charged

drain it completely through normal use = instantly dead. quite hard to do with most modern batteries.

store it flat, let it go flatter = completely dead… quite easy to do, think flat battery in drawer for a couple of months

store it either flat or full charge = capacity starts dropping off

Avoid Ryobi’s – one battery burst into flames first charge, and now I have a dead battery fir the second time. Very very poor.