festool clone?

[leakyroof]

YES!!!!! It killed with paint/body repairs on our ‘84 Vanagon. First time I enjoyed Body work and didn’t end up coated in sanding dust on a vehicle…  [cool] [cool] [cool]

I'm another convert for dustless automotive sanding.  [smile]  My nostrils are still plugged up with sanding dust from sanding automobiles years ago with air driven sanders that had zero dust control. Once the car was sanded, the car was moved outside to be blown down with compressed air while the sanding area was washed down with water.  We then flushed all of that dust/dirt back into the water/sewer system hoping that the nasty parts of the equation would miraculously be captured by a filtration system that we knew nothing about while still hoping an active filtration system actually existed.  [eek]  Ignorance is bliss.

Does this look familiar?

[attachimg=1]

[attachimg=2]

  Yup, my first air powered DA.  Put one together from a couple of clunkers that people had given up on. Then found that my Single Stage 110v 5HP compressor with a 60 gallon tank couldn't keep up with it..... [doh] [doh] [doh]
  That ended my Air Powered sanding for the most part since many sanders back then were air hogs, and I couldn't afford to buy a better, more powerful 2 stage compressor for a good number of years.
Now I have a rebuilt Saylor-Beall commercial 3/5hp compressor with the standard 80 gallon tank, and rarely run it since most of my Festool Sanders took the space of any Pneumatic Sanders I might have wished for years ago.... [big grin] [big grin]
Add to that, Cordless Makita 1/2" impact, and a few Snap-On impacts, not even my Air powered Impacts see much use anymore. Any pneumatic sanders that I still use at home are generally special models like 3/8" or 1/2" wide belt sanders, or a neat couple of 3" sanders.

 

[leakyroof]

In Australia the smash repair industry is a large portion of Festool's market and the retail hobbyist is cream on the cake.

Interesting.  I thought it was almost exclusively for woodworkers and carpenters, etc.

  Festool and 3M went into the Automotive Body Shop world hard and heavy in the past few years as a collaboration from what I'm told.  3M already had some nice Autobody Tools to begin with, but Festool brought their models and Dust Extraction to the party. So, it's been a Sales Push of sorts to get Auto Body Shops to take Electric powered Sanders/ DA/type tools to heart over the very traditional Air Powered Sanders.
Festool didn't seem to be making any headway with their Air Powered Sanders, the tide against established brands was always going to be an uphill battle, and the higher price of Festool Pneumatic sanders didn't help either against cheaper Sanders too.
But the Dust Extraction Battle has gotten pretty serious for many shops, so if you sell the usual[ to us anyway] package deal of electric sander and Vacuum, you have a mobile sanding rig that doesn't rely on a Central Shop Vacuum System, you have GRANAT abrasives, which do very well in a Body Shop setting by design. Add the newer EC sanders, which resemble the traditional Auto Body Sanders, also by design, and you start to make Sales Headway finally into shops.

 

[Packard]

Air driven motors tend to never get hot during use, they spin at much higher speeds, and they can be rebuilt on a clean table with some simple hand tools and some specific O-rings and gaskets. 

Hygiene being the major reason for failures in shop-rebuilding.  The rebuilds had to be done in a hospital-grade cleanliness environment (though need not be sterile, but dust and grit-free entirely).

I think the sustained high speed operations of the air driven motors is enough of an advantage to keep electric at bay.  Also, air driven motors tend to be much smaller and lighter. 

On the minus side, you do have to be tethered to a compressor, though the sanders and grinders all seem to be working in specific areas of the shop, so not as much a problem as with woodworking.

 

[leakyroof]

Air driven motors tend to never get hot during use, they spin at much higher speeds, and they can be rebuilt on a clean table with some simple hand tools and some specific O-rings and gaskets. 

Hygiene being the major reason for failures in shop-rebuilding.  The rebuilds had to be done in a hospital-grade cleanliness environment (though need not be sterile, but dust and grit-free entirely).

I think the sustained high speed operations of the air driven motors is enough of an advantage to keep electric at bay.  Also, air driven motors tend to be much smaller and lighter. 

On the minus side, you do have to be tethered to a compressor, though the sanders and grinders all seem to be working in specific areas of the shop, so not as much a problem as with woodworking.

Having spent many years using, and rebuilding Air tools... My thoughts on that- Yes, they were always smaller and lighter than electrically operated tools, but that has changed with cordless and brushless motors. The gap has really closed.

Dirt and crud have always been an issue, but not at the rebuilding stage, it's the actual usage stage that kills most Air Tools.  Historically, Body Shops are always worried about oil coming out of an air tool, and rightly so, it really screws up a paint job when the oil ends up on your project before the Painting or Priming stage.
So, many guys are a bit notorious for never lubing their tools unless the poor thing really needs it.
Grinders and Sanders that didn't carry their exhaust away from the work surface were the usual culprits, with forward blowing exhausts/mufflers at the front end of the tool depositing any oil vapor right where you didn't want it.
So, once everyone found out how handy thin , light, plastic tubes attached to the rear of a tool, where the exhaust was directed away from your work surface, air sound was muffled as well,  then adding a Vacuum seemed like the next logical step... [big grin] [big grin]

My first introduction to high spec and high quality air tools was through Suhner Tools- Swiss ,if I remember currectly-  Really nice Pneumatic stuff, and Flexible Shaft Machines as well. Once I got to work with those air tools, so many good brands that I was once proud to use, seemed out of date and behind the times for a work environment.
  The Big Problem at the Auto Body and Technician/Mechanic level is the pricing of said Industrial Quality Tools-  Way above what many Techs and a good few shops, would spend on, even with all the extra benefits and design built-in.
  So, still to this day, so many of my Fellow Techs buy almost strictly on Price first, and not what they're getting for their money.

 

[smorgasbord]

I completely agree on the hard pads.
I had some good painters refinish a room's floor, and they didn't use the hard pad and you can see slight undulatings as the wood grain was harder in spots. Some wood steps I did myself with the hard pad did not have those undulations.

And note that even 3M has had problems with its electric RO sanders. I saw a video where it seems they're making people whole and addressing the issue, but it goes to show that in real work environments product quality that holds up over time isn't so straightforward.

 

[Packard]

Many years ago I repped for Franklin Oil, a manufacturer of stamping lubricants.  One of our competitors’ produced a stamping oil that got contaminated with silicone and sold it to Chrysler/Plymouth.

It was used on the “Neon” line of cars and almost all of them had paint peeling from the roof, trunk deck and hood.  Efforts to repaint those cars typically failed, with the paint peeling again a few months later.

Cleaning silicone with solvents generally just smudged that lubricant over the surface.

Franklyn Oil had a long standing prohibition against any samples of silicone in their building.  That helped our sales quite a bit.

I used to tell people that if there was a neighbor you detested and he got in a fender-bender, then you should walk your dog past that car and spray the damage with silicone spray.  Not only would the paint not stick, but the body putty would break off too.

I wasn’t ever expecting anyone to follow that advice, but a friend of mine did.  The problem with that is you end up punishing the body shop more than your neighbor. So don’t do that.  But be careful of overspray with silicone.  It could ruin future repairs.

 

[Cheese]

Having spent many years using, and rebuilding Air tools... My thoughts on that- Yes, they were always smaller and lighter than electrically operated tools, but that has changed with cordless and brushless motors. The gap has really closed.

Dirt and crud have always been an issue, but not at the rebuilding stage, it's the actual usage stage that kills most Air Tools.  Historically, Body Shops are always worried about oil coming out of an air tool, and rightly so, it really screws up a paint job when the oil ends up on your project before the Painting or Priming stage.

My first introduction to high spec and high quality air tools was through Suhner Tools- Swiss ,if I remember currectly-  Really nice Pneumatic stuff, and Flexible Shaft Machines as well. Once I got to work with those air tools, so many good brands that I was once proud to use, seemed out of date and behind the times for a work environment.

The Big Problem at the Auto Body and Technician/Mechanic level is the pricing of said Industrial Quality Tools-  Way above what many Techs and a good few shops, would spend on, even with all the extra benefits and design built-in.
So, still to this day, so many of my Fellow Techs buy almost strictly on Price first, and not what they're getting for their money.

Good summary [member=10952]leakyroof[/member]  [big grin]

I'd add, that I still use several small Ingersoll Rand pneumatic air grinders that use small diameter Scotch-Brite™ Roloc™ discs for material removal and blending. They work extremely well until you throttle the speed down, then they stall constantly unless you use a lite touch. I'd be very happy if Festool or Milwaukee introduced a replacement tool for these items.

Pneumatic tools were once the tools of the future, but with the advent of brush-less motors...not so much. They've been pretty much relegated to the dust bins of history. Just ask me, I have a small roll cab full of pneumatic sanders, scalers, drills, impacts, jitterbugs along with a RA grinder. None of them have been fired up within the last 15 years or more.

That National Detroit DA I showed, hasn't been fired up in the last 40 years. I keep it in the bottom of the roll cab only to remind myself on how far tools have come. It's a good reminder to me that sometimes the old times weren't necessarily the good times.  [smile]

Try to stall out a RO 90...good luck.

 

[luvmytoolz]

I don't know what the pneumatic tools are like these days but the thing I hated most about them years back was the sheer amount of noise they made. Some were like a jet turbine in use.

 

[Kev]

In Australia the smash repair industry is a large portion of Festool's market and the retail hobbyist is cream on the cake.

Interesting.  I thought it was almost exclusively for woodworkers and carpenters, etc.

I first came across Festool sanders when it was Festo, and this was in the workshop of a buddy of mine who built fibreglass windsurfers for the World Cup. He maintained that they were the only ones to use.

Regards from Perth

Derek

I made the switch from Rupes to Festool for sanders and DC several decades ago. It was like a gateway drug to the rest of the Festool range

I'd love to know what the market breakups are in Oz since we started to see Festool in the likes of Total Tools, Trade Tools, Tool Kit Depot and Sydney Tools .. that must have impacted the consumer base mix.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

Good summary [member=10952]leakyroof[/member]  [big grin]

I'd add, that I still use several small Ingersoll Rand pneumatic air grinders that use small diameter Scotch-Brite™ Roloc™ discs for material removal and blending. They work extremely well until you throttle the speed down, then they stall constantly unless you use a lite touch. I'd be very happy if Festool or Milwaukee introduced a replacement tool for these items.

Pneumatic tools were once the tools of the future, but with the advent of brush-less motors...not so much. They've been pretty much relegated to the dust bins of history. Just ask me, I have a small roll cab full of pneumatic sanders, scalers, drills, impacts, jitterbugs along with a RA grinder. None of them have been fired up within the last 15 years or more.

That National Detroit DA I showed, hasn't been fired up in the last 40 years. I keep it in the bottom of the roll cab only to remind myself on how far tools have come. It's a good reminder to me that sometimes the old times weren't necessarily the good times.  [smile]

Try to stall out a RO 90...good luck.

Agreed, good summary, from both of you.
I came into the cabinet trade form autobody and was quite surprised. First was the sanders themselves.
At least in my area (and at the time, 20 years ago) body shops used 6" pneumatic sanders with adhesive-based sandpaper. The cabinet shop used 5" hook and loop pneumatic sanders.

Seemed totally backward to me? Cabinet shops are generally sanding flat parts, where a bigger/harder pad would be better and the body guys were always sanding curves, where the inherent softness of hook and loop would be better. No one used electric sanders in either.
That is why I went for the ETS EC 125, when I first started with electric, for the dust extraction. Getting the boss to switch to a different hole pattern, since no one cared, was a far easier ask, than stocking a totally different size.

All of the years with a very low profile pneumatic was why I avoided electrics. They are very tippy/clumsy in comparison, thus the EC.
Like everybody else, I abused the pneumatic for years. It never got oiled, ever, but our air was clean/dry. Corrosion from wet nasty air is what kills them.
I do still have a 5" pneumatic, but I don't use it nearly as much as I used to. For me the main pneumatic sanders are 8" geared-orbital Ingersol-Rand 328b. I use two of them because of the PSA paper. It is much more difficult to deal with on 8" paper. I keep 40 grit on one and 80 on the other, only occasionally switching to 120.

 

[Cheese]

Agreed, good summary, from both of you.
I came into the cabinet trade form autobody and was quite surprised. First was the sanders themselves.
At least in my area (and at the time, 20 years ago) body shops used 6" pneumatic sanders with adhesive-based sandpaper. The cabinet shop used 5" hook and loop pneumatic sanders.

Seemed totally backward to me? Cabinet shops are generally sanding flat parts, where a bigger/harder pad would be better and the body guys were always sanding curves, where the inherent softness of hook and loop would be better. No one used electric sanders in either.
That is why I went for the ETS EC 125, when I first started with electric, for the dust extraction. Getting the boss to switch to a different hole pattern, since no one cared, was a far easier ask, than stocking a totally different size.

All of the years with a very low profile pneumatic was why I avoided electrics. They are very tippy/clumsy in comparison, thus the EC.
Like everybody else, I abused the pneumatic for years. It never got oiled, ever, but our air was clean/dry. Corrosion from wet nasty air is what kills them.
I do still have a 5" pneumatic, but I don't use it nearly as much as I used to. For me the main pneumatic sanders are 8" geared-orbital Ingersol-Rand 328b. I use two of them because of the PSA paper. It is much more difficult to deal with on 8" paper. I keep 40 grit on one and 80 on the other, only occasionally switching to 120.

Thanks for that...you just made me remember the PSA paper problems.  [crying]  If you put too much heat into the pad & paper and then let the sander cool down for a few hours, the paper was permanently adhered to the pad. I spent many hours removing small shards of sandpaper from the sanding pad until I learned to remove the PSA sandpaper from the DA sander while the paper was still warm.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

Thanks for that...you just made me remember the PSA paper problems.  [crying]  If you put too much heat into the pad & paper and then let the sander cool down for a few hours, the paper was permanently adhered to the pad. I spent many hours removing small shards of sandpaper from the sanding pad until I learned to remove the PSA sandpaper from the DA sander while the paper was still warm.

There is trick to that. I will share, but you have to promise to credit "some dude from the internet"  [big grin] every time you tell someone else.
Stick the paper to your shirt, pull it off, stick it again, then put it on your sander. The fibers it steals from your shirt will reduce the adhesion "enough" without being too much.
I still have to do that with the 8" ones. I use those big IR328b sanders on every job that gets Corian.

 

[Michael Kellough]

“Stick the paper to your shirt, pull it off, stick it again, then put it on your sander.”

If you forgot to do that, just turn the sander on and sand something to warm/soften the adhesive. Then you can peel it off.

 

[Kev]

Referring to something as a "clone" is like waving a red flag at me. So often the correct phrase at best should be "similar in appearance".

Like so many words in the English language, the specific biological definition of the word has been eroded ... right down to becoming sub culture slang.

 

[mino]

Referring to something as a "clone" is like waving a red flag at me. So often the correct phrase at best should be "similar in appearance".

Like so many words in the English language, the specific biological definition of the word has been eroded ... right down to becoming sub culture slang.

To be fair, there are real "clones" on the market for stuff like the Makita small routers etc.

BUT. These tend to cost around 60-80% of the original as it is not possible to make them significantly cheaper while comparable on function.

Not advocating purchasing such .. but there are markets where these clones are more readily available (and serviceable) than the originals.

But this is not it. This one is indeed a case of "similar outside appearance", nothing more.