Milwaukee Tool has launched new wire stripping tools for use with cordless drills and impact drivers.
The new wire strippers look a bit like nut drivers or socket attachments, but instead of driving fasteners they strip the insulation off of wire ends.
Each features a color-coded ring for easy size identification.
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There are 4 sizes for stripping solid copper wire:
- 8 AWG – 48-32-6401
- 10 AWG – 48-32-6402
- 12 AWG – 48-32-6403
- 14 AWG – 48-32-6404
The tools feature a 1/4″ hex shank that can be adjusted for strip lengths from 1/2″ to 1-1/2″.
The wire stripper accessories
- Buy the 8 AWG At Acme Tools
- Buy the 10 AWG At Acme Tools
- Buy the 12 AWG At Acme Tools
- Buy the 14 AWG At Acme Tools
- Buy the 2pc Set (12, 14 AWG)
- Buy the 4pc Set
They will be sold individually for $25 each, and you can also buy a 2pc set with 12 and 14 AWG strippers (48-32-6405, $40), and a 4pc set with all of them (48-32-6406, $75).
Discussion
These tools are designed to quickly strip solid copper wire to consistent lengths.
While specifically described as being for use with impact drivers, these should work just as well with cordless drills.
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Will you be adding one to your kit?
frobo
I’m struggling to think who would find this useful. Thinking back to the days when I had a summer job wiring 3 or 4 residential panels per day; I had to deal with 10, 12, and 14 gauge wire. So I would have had to switch from one stripper to another, whereas my little Ideal stripper had it all in one tool.
These days, much of the wire I deal with is stranded, so again this wouldn’t be a good fit.
They’re also not cheap, so I would think the market for these strippers would be fairly limited.
Andrew
There are some industrial environments where high volume, and consistent strip lengths are required to be done by hand, but I doubt the every day hobbyist really needs this. And those were on big cables, with wires and/or coax inside, not just individual wires.
Stephen
I work in exactly that kind of environment and we currently use a generic stripping attachment. It works OK up to 7 strand wire, and works poorly on higher strand counts. We are stripping back as many as 1,000 wires in a 24h period. We are testing multi-conductor cables and need to be able to zip the ends off quickly, and due to safety/ergonomic reasons prefer to not use a traditional manual wire stripper.
Jronman
What about some of the fancy Knipex wire strippers?
Stephen
Whether its the Knipex or Ideal striping tools, you still have to squeeze a spring-loaded handle which is not preferred from an ergonomic standpoint.
Bonnie
In industrial environments I’d expect you to use a dedicated automatic wire stripper rather than a drill-attachment.
MM
Yes. If you’re doing product assembly there specialized machines that feed, cut-to-length, and strip wire. You program how many pieces of what length & what strip length you want. Bulk wire comes off the spool and goes into one end of the machine, cut-and-stripped lengths come out the other. There are also machines which cut and dispense pieces of electrical tape in a similar manner.
There are also benchtop wire strippers that don’t feed or cut wire, they just strip wire that you manually insert into the machine. Some of these can do rather complex stripping jobs like coaxial cable, and others remove the enamel coating on magnet wire.
Andrew
Part of my post mentions that they have similar implements for cables, so not just wires. The cables are the really thick ones that are run in industrial/commercial environments, so not something a simple machine would handle.
Jronman
DeWALT makes a dedicated 20v max powered wire stripper that can do the bigger stuff. You can even specify the length of sheathing you need to remove. I don’t recall if it can do different diameters of wire.
Stephen
Yes, the Dewalt stripping tool is a re-purposed drill and comes in a kit with several different dies for a wide range of conductor sizes. The dies don’t go any smaller than ~4 AWG, though.
Rog
I’m not an electrician but I’m guess these are not aimed at residential use. Likely larger commercial projects. There’s obviously a market tho, Milwaukee doesn’t throw things at the wall to see what sticks (*cough*SBD*cough*)
D3t
Or residential wiring. I’ve seen similar strippers in use in YouTube videos.
Stuart
Building wiring, solid THHN, etc.
paul
In my experience things like this and wire nut twisters were only ever useful if I were cutting in a bunch of panels or troughs. Could I still do it by hand with pliers and twist wire nuts by hand? Yes. Gotta have options.
Lance
How are these different from the ones sold on Amazon?
Weslee
They say Milwaukee on them😂
Saulac
Second this. The idea is not new. This type of tool is all over social media marketplaces. I assumption has been they do not work consistently enough to worth keeping a specialized tool. I do hope Milwaukee able proves the idea works. Make sense to buy even for moderate remodel jobs. Most residential has no more than 3 or 4 wire gauges.
Would be incomplete talking about these but not about the similar wire stwisting accessories. Same thoughts as above.
Mark S
As an electrician that does both commercial and residential, I would have 0 interest in buying these at this price point. I would MAYBE buy the #8 one, IF it were for stranded.
Im thinking maybe this might work for the guys with bad wrists or something, but that’s about it.
If i had employees I would take these from their bags and throw them out. Time wasted rotating between sizes could be a huge waste i would say.
Ooof Milwaukee, what is this one?!?! No thanks!
Aaron Lipner
Switching often looks like a pain but I wonder if that happens within one box or panel a lot.
They also could have done much better with the color coding. Three shades of grey and a red…isn’t the best. I’m surprised no marking to help tell what gage the wire is, though I doubt an issue for professionals.
Bonnie
Just within a common North American residential panel I’d expect to see up to 5 different gauges (14 and 12 mostly, plus a few in 10/8/6 for the Range/Dryer/EV charger/Heat Pump/Etc).
Agreed on the color coding. Seems like you could just re-use the common Romex gauge colors if this is intended for residential work (though now that 2 and 3 conductors are different it’s slightly less clear and you’d need to differentiate 6 and 8).
Saulac
The last picture seems to indicate that the hex shank is used to set the depth. Wonder what mechanism is used to index the stripper on the shank. Klein use small cuts on the angles (?) of the hex on some of their screw drivers.
Stephen
I use a similar tool and the silver collar on the bottom is a quick-release. It engages ball detents along the length of the shank to give preset depths.
Nathan
I guess a modern residential panel might benefit from this but my other wire stripper seems to work fine on solid copper. And it’s pretty quick and I don’t have to whirl a metal sharp thing at 1500 rpm to do said job. And I’m not dedicating another drill or impact driver for this. I don’t think. So shrug
Mark M.
I appreciate Milwaukee’s innovation in general, but this is a solution looking for a problem. I’ve been twisting wires for the past 30 years (yikes) and the only application I’d even consider this for is stranded bigger than #6, but even then I bet the time savings between 2-3 strokes of a knife vs. grabbing a drill isn’t much. IDK, maybe there’s some super niche application but this setup for #14 and #12 seems like a joke. Maybe a production line but even then I’d expect a higher level of automation. Pass.
SlowEng
It’s not an innovation. This thing has been sold by various other brands or drop ship companies in one form or another. I remember seeing this product being advertised on YouTube short video by someone trying to sell . I think you can even find it on Amazon as well. Milwaukee, a subsidiary of Chinese tool company, is just rebranding an existing product. Maybe they tweaked it a bit but it’s something that already exists and is in the marketplace.
Stuart
Milwaukee’s parent company, TTI is not a “Chinese tool company.” TTI is publicly traded and based in HK.
With extremely rare exceptions that most people would be not be able to identify, Milwaukee doesn’t “rebrand existing products.” I’d bet they saw demand – presumably from electricians that saw the hyped-up TikToks for no-name accessories – and started from scratch to ensure they could meet their users’ expectations.
Is it novel? Definitely not.
Bonnie
While dismissive, it’s technically correct that TTI is Chinese, in the same way FSG (a tool and die company in Wales) is a British company. While Hong Kong has a higher degree of autonomy, they are still legally Chinese and part of China. Not even in the disputed way that Taiwan/ROC is.
fred
Klein sells 2 manual twist strippers for larger sizes:
https://www.amazon.com/Large-Stripper-Klein-Tools-21051/dp/B07D7TZ3LD
Milwaukee also sells a M18 cordless stripper likely aimed at utility customers:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwaukee-M18-18V-Lithium-Ion-Cordless-Cable-Stripper-Kit-for-Al-THHN-XHHW-Wire-Cutting-2935AL-21/311195014
Ben
They should have color coded them the same color as Romex wire. 12 AWG should have been yellow. Their colors make no sense.
Aaron
Came here to make the same comment! Romex jacket colors are hard-wired into my brain 🙂
White – 14 ga
Yellow – 12 ga
Orange – 10 ga
Black – 8 ga
Joshua
I’m in the line trade. Why not for bigger wire sizes? Where something like that would be useful? Mainly for underground secondary or something. But either way we always use a pocket knife which is always been the way..
Stuart
Are higher gauges typically solid or stranded? They do have an M18 cable stripper for much larger sizes.
Matt_T
#10 is usually the max for solid. Anything larger is usually stranded.
Anything up to about #6 you can do with a COTS stripper. #4 and larger is where most folks use a boxcutter.
Matt_T
Solution in search of a problem. Right now I cut the wire and strip the wire, then bend a hook in the wire more often than not, with one tool. Why would I waste time switching back and forth. This is DYIer bait that TTI should’ve released under Ryobi…
Also had anyone ever worked with insulated #8 solid? I can’t recall ever encountering it.
JP454
Honestly that’s what I was thinking. do they even make solid 8 for general use or is that marketed to a very specific situation.
I’m not an electrician but come in contact with it a lot. I know I’ve seen solid 10 but it’s all from old installs. is anyone even using solid 10 at this point?
John
10 awg romex is solid
Matt_T
#10 solid is still normal for romex and mc. You can get #10, and smaller, mc stranded but it’s more expensive.
JP454
oh yeah, I always forget about large Romex/MC gauge.
I’m in conduit land so the only whips I regularly encounter are for lights and normally 16ga.
ElectroAtletico
Why not just stick with the hand stripper?
Stuart
It’s good to have options?
Jim Hogan
Yeah, I’m not seeing a lot of value either, BUT here’s two things I’d like to see in a cordless drill powered accessory:
1. In the electrical category, an adapter that accepts a red wire nut and allows you to twist it on with your drill. Yeah baby!
2. In the plumbing category, a PEX A tube expander that uses your drill to provide the power to expand. Milwaukee has a dedicated battery powered PEX A tube expander that costs approx $500. Kind of expensive for the diy guy. A drill powered accessory would be awesome and much cheaper.
Stuart
DIYers can get manual PEX expansion tools.
TomD
I’ve used a manual expander once.
The $400 or so for the Milwaukee was well worth it, even though I’ve only tens of joints.
fred
We used Uponor-Wirsbo (made by Virax) manual expanders (the cones actually can be made to work with the M12 expander) – and they were not exactly cheap.
https://www.pscia.com/2299290/Product/Uponor-Wirsbo-Q6295075
Maybe the less expensive alternatives on Amazon will do a good job – but the early Uponor ones did not automatically rotate the expander cone – sometimes resulting in a “crease” that promoted failures and callbacks.
fred
BTW – once Milwaukee introduced the M12 tool and then the M18 – those manual expanders became paperweights for us.
Stuart
There’s also the option for PEX B, if one’s budget leaves them exclusively in the realm of hand/manual tools.
Tony
The little flippy things that replace wire nuts. Stripping ends off to specific lengths would be useful