Thread by @gravislizard

often when we call technology "cursed" it's because it seems to do things we can't think of any rational explanation for

take, for instance, the whole situation that's going on here

This is not a milwaukee tool, but it takes their batteries. This is not that surprising; the bare 18650 cell resolutely fails to take off as a replacement for AAs for reasons unbeknownst to everyone, so "tool batteries" are the most accessible form of removable lithium ion power.

The tool itself also isn't surprising. It's a portable glue gun for paintless dent removal, a big industry these days where glue guns are used a ton, and I imagine power tool batteries are a common thing to find in these shops.

Here's what threw me for a loop. The gun, and the battery holder / heat control, are two separate units. Huh?

At first this seems baffling, but looking at context, the reason becomes apparent pretty quick.

First, the marketing attached to this is "STOP WASTING GLUE!" The suggested use case is to buy multiple guns and load them with different glue, so you don't have to waste a whole stick when you want to switch types and you're only 1/4 through the current stick.

That makes sense - PDR uses different glues. But why not put the battery mount and heat control on the gun itself?

This is why: They make them for three different mounts, Milwaukee, Dewalt and Makita. Since their principle is to own multiple guns, they can't really afford to make the entire gun battery-specific.

If they expect every customer to buy 3-4 guns, and they expect to have 500 customers in a year, then they'd have to make 2000 Makitas, 2000 DeWalts, 2000 Milwaukees. Otherwise they might not be able to supply enough Makitas, despite having a warehouse full of Dewalts.

The cost of a gun is $32, while a frame + gun is $167, suggesting the battery mount and/or heat control is quite expensive. They probably have demographics about battery usage showing differences in popularity.

So they probably make 500 Milwaukees but only 250 makitas and dewalts, then spend the rest of their funds on bare guns, which are much cheaper, so they can make 2000 of those.

So this looks silly, but probably makes things logistically much simpler for them.