If this were my issue, I'd definitely hand it off to Festool service.

It's been my experience that once you smell that acrid burned electronics odor that some electrical parts/boards are pretty much toast. Even if you do get it to fire up, it's still not long for this world without some replacement parts. Sorry for the bad news. 

Hi Guys

Many thanks for your replies. I’d sort of guessed that this was likely a more serious/fundamental problem but was hopeful nonetheless.

To be honest it makes me think that I should give other companies a try. I’m about to buy two more sanders and I think another brand might win out this time.

I think I mentioned that I have only used the Rotex for hobby use and so it hasn’t been abused in any way nor has it done much work. I still have 80% ofthe Granat paper I bought4 years ago. In fact I remember I bought the tool in Jan/Feb and it didn’t even get plugged in until July!  It’s like my Kapex ... it’s going on a year old and I’ve used it on about 6/7 separate occasions and even then it’s not been used for a “day’s work”. Here’s hoping that doesn’t go up in a puff of smoke either.  . (A Festool rep told me they’d addressed the motor burning issues a year or so before I bought mine so that should be a thing of the past).

Last year when it was looked at by festool the Rotex was given a clean bill of health (under warranty). A year on and a handful of uses later and it’s burned out. How on earth would the tool fair in a professional environment? The decorators we use share 2 x Mirkas between them (3-4 lads depending on the job) so they’re pretty much always running 6 days a week for a number of years and they’ve not even had theirs serviced! And as of yesterday when i asked if they’d ever had them burn out etc they said they’re still going strong.

Anyways sorry for the rant. It’s just really disappointing that given the buy in price the tool lasts a fraction of what one would reasonably expect (if I was a pro MY Rotex couldn’t have lasted more than six months (I’m sure others might not wear quite so prematurely).  I guess for the pro these problems would arise within the warranty period so downtime would be the main disadvantage).

Have a good night and good luck fellow FOGgers!