Tips When Buying Sanders for Difficult Site Applications

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Video Transcript

We're going to talk about some tips when buying sanders and have a look at a few of the specialty sanders that you would need with side applications. We might be working on site. We might be working in a workshop. Particularly on site, there's always the option to come up against difficult applications.

It may be you’re working corners. We might be working edges and need to access tricky areas like windows etc. We need a sander to be fairly flexible to be able to do all those sort of applications. It could be paint removal, we could be working with solid timber veneers, whatever it might be. When you're on site, it’s best to have one with a bit of flexibility and a cordless sander is useful. Sometimes when you're in a factory, you might be working a station position and it's better to use a mains powered tool. When you're making a purchase decision, see if you have the flexibility to do both with one tool. 

When you are on site, you can be flexible and use a battery operated sander and possibly a bag. When we're doing more long-term sanding, you can use a mains powered one connected to a dust extractor. This will be really effective on dust. Another key buying consideration is abrasives, making sure that you're getting good life out of your abrasives and also having the right abrasive in the right system behind it. This makes sure that you're using these abrasions most efficiently.

When we look at these three sanders at the front here, they are specialty sanders. We've got a standard random orbital. We've got a little RTS which is a standard orbital sander and then we've got another orbital sander which is used when trying to access corners. We need to be able to be flexible when we use them on site if we need to. We can connect it up the battery and if we're not working with a dust extractor, we can quite easily put a bag on to it as well. We're then controlling the dust straight into a bag without the need of having a hose or a lead. 

If we are working in a situation where we’re in the same spot all the time, this is where we can also fit a mains power adaptor. We pop that into there and now we can use the full system, being the plug at lead, also the vacuum cleaner dust extractor and we can pull all our dust away from that as well. It really offers a lot of a lot of flexibility.

In certain applications, if we take windows, potentially now there's every chance that we can damage the pad but we can also damage the material we're working on. When you look at buying them you really need to make sure that they've got smart accessories that can help you work a lot more easily in this situation. We've got a protector perhaps around the pad that actually stops the pad marking the material that you're working on. It also protects your pad to give it a longer life. All these things make the system work a lot more easily.

The right abrasive for the tool is important. We need to make sure that we're getting t the best lifetime out of the abrasive. We've got the jet stream extraction. We're moving that stuff to the outside which enables us to get a lot better use out of the abrasive.

Festool do quite a number of specialty sanders. These are a couple we've got: linear sanders particularly when we're working in a rebate where some orbital sanders aren't the best option, so we can move with a linear sander. Belt sanders are needed for high stock removal. Other sanders are random orbitals and also rotary sanders for different applications.

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