Ken Nagrod said:
Alex that's misinformation. Ask an engineer or service tech. Air tools have that advantage over the electrics. It even states the advantages in the Festool catalog. I used to have a side business rebuilding tools and the only thing I ever saw kill an air tool, besides poor quality, was moisture in the air line and not oiling the tool before daily use was a close second.
I don't know why you would call that misinformation. Since you're a professional, what in your professional opinion are electric sanders made for, if not for handling large amounts of dust? ???
I grew up in a body shop. My father had one with at the peak of it's business 15 employees. We had many sanders, electric and air powered. You say you've never seen an air sander been killed by dust, well, I never saw an electric sander been killed by dust either even though we had many throughout the years. The electric eccentric sanders always were first choice when working on cars. We always did our own repairs on tools and I was encouraged to do this myself from a very young age, so I was always taking the sanders apart when something went wrong with one. And never was one killed by dust. They only reasons they would stop functioning was through normal wear and tear on the bearings, and the outer shell, after thousands of hours of use. And wearing of the brushes of course, and the electric plates on the anchor of the motor where the brushes touch. But not dust.
As you can see on the picture posted by Peter it is a known issue that dust is harmful. Manufacturers prepare for this. And not without merit, I might say.
Of course an air sander has less parts so it is even more robust than an electric sander. After all, the less parts something has, the less things can fail. Heck, it doesn't even have a motor on board. But that doesn't mean electric sanders are not up to the task. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure electric sanders are in an overwhelming number being used for sanding drywall as compared to air sanders. I know quite some contractors and painters around town and never have I seen anyone bring air tools to the job site. They always use electric sanders.
And before I forget, I thought this Planex you mentioned, the one specifically designed for drywall, was also electric?
