On 16 and 17 February 2011 I was a participant in the End User Solid Surface class conducted by the one and only Steve Bace at the Festool Training Center in Henderson, NV.
That was shortly before the official NA launch of the RO 90 DX and either just before or very early in the NA history of Granat. Unfortunately although the training center had received several RO 90 DX, the hard pads were still on back-order.
When working with solid surface, nearly always you need a hard pad to preserve crisp edges and maintain flat surfaces. There were aspects of our solid surface exercise projects were the RO 90 DX would have been ideal.
My experience is that hardly ever is it necessary to be aggressive sanding solid surface. During that class I did put hard pads on both an ETS 150/3 and an ETS 125. As I recall the Training Center did not have every grit in all sizes of Granat. Let me tell you that I found Granat marvelous on solid surface.
My notes show that Steve felt there would be no reason to select different progression of grits because of a change to Granat. Comparing Granat to other Festool abrasives during that class I felt in all cases Granat not only lasted longer, it also produced the best results. Still I think no Granat was then available to us in the finer grits.
I am sure that if Shane does not see this thread, he will respond to a PM or e-mail. Then Shane can pose the question to Steve Bace.
Now that finer grain grits of Granat are in stock, I am sure this will be welcome news to solid surface fabricators.