Oldest New Festool tool you've received?

[Chainring]

I'll get it out of the way right now, this is not a complaint. More of a question born out of curiosity about dealer inventory.

I just received a Carvex PSC 420 EB (561479) from the closeout at McFeely's and its manufacture date is 2013. Yep, new in box from 2013. Not a mark on it and it has the 5 AH Li non-Bluetooth battery. The battery still has a charge, which is crazy to me, unless someone pulled batteries and gave them a little boost every so often.

The original listing claimed it's not a Bluetooth enabled tool. I thought, "Eh, whatever, I'll just manually trigger from the hose remote on my CT." I took a 4.0 Bluetooth battery, slapped it in the Carvex, did the pairing thing and the CT kicked on. Yeehaw! It's in a T-Loc, so that's good. Warranty went through properly.

What's the oldest new tool you've received?

 

[Cheese]

I purchased a recon MFK 700 in 2017 that had a build date of 2008. It looked brand new and everything was perfect.

 

[Rockhigh]

Last year I picked up an new Vac Sys in 2021 and it had a 2016 date code, worried me at first. Been working great ever since.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[mino]

Closeout ... that speaks more of inventory (mis) management at the place closing out. Wonder why it was closing out ... heh.

Ref. battery being good after 5 or more years, that is not really all that surprising. Festool used high-quality cells and if these are stored in good conditions they will last.  When new, quality cells have have very low self-discharge.

Festool also uses high-quality electronics which will not drain the batter while not in use.

It is just we got so used to the junk other vendors sell as "pro" kit one gets suprised when something works as it should ...

That said, a 10yrs old battery is really old and will have its internal chemistry affected by age one way or other. So it will not give full 1000 cycles if used from new but, say, "only" 500 full cycles ... like a new "pro" brand one will. Eh.

Onto the "old tools" sold. Well. Festool tools are made to last for decades. As in, the materials /and lubricants/ used are not self-degrading. This also makes it a non-issue as they KNOW their tools will not degrade over a year or two.

Easy to prove this is to smell the Festool tools. Including rubber pieces. You will notice they almost do not smell. This is because the additives used are high-quality non-volatile ones.

Those are the things the $ goes and why a Makita /with certain performance/ can be 2/3 the Festool price. Let us hope it stays this way. Festool is one of the last "traditional" tool makers still holding out on this.

 

[derekcohen]

Well. Festool tools are made to last for decades. As in, the materials /and lubricants/ used are not self-degrading. This also makes it a non-issue as they KNOW their tools will not degrade over a year or two.

Always good to hear this. I am not adverse to purchasing older Festool tools which have been used carefully and minimally over a couple of decades. I have tools which are branded “Festo”, which makes them greater than 20 years old. Such as an ET2E sander (forerunner of the 150-series), and a RS400e sander. These are terrific with Abranet into a 26e vacuum cleaner. I have just purchased a Festool AT65e track saw, which looks like it was hardly used. I hear from many that it is a better track saw than the AT55 model which replaced it.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Crazyraceguy]

Mine is nowhere near as old as some of these. The RAS115 that I bought in October of '20 had a build date of '17.

 

[peter halle]

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the oldest manufacture dates are here in North America.  We are a large market for Festool, but when it comes to manufacturing we cause hiccups due to our power and also our safety testing procedures.

So when a batch of tools needs to be made for the North American market and then other production has to stop to create the NA versions, the batches of tools made can be large.  And then stored.  If a tool is a slow seller like for example the RAS, then the pallets sit until demand finally swallows them up.  Of course there will always be a straggler that was hidden in a dealer warehouse or even in the distribution channel.

Nice thing is that if the tool is registered and proof of purchase retained / provided then the full warranty goes forward from the purchase date.

Peter

 

[team_kap]

recently got a banged up TS 75 (metric version) on recon site, it had a serial number < 10K, no manufacturing date but the unit has a 05/06 on the label, please feel free to share  thoughts/insights

 

[mino]

recently got a banged up TS 75 (metric version) on recon site, it had a serial number < 10K, no manufacturing date but the unit has a 05/06 on the label, please feel free to share  thoughts/insights

06/05 would normally indicate June 2005, but did not see it in such place before. That would also align with the serial #, give-take.

 

[Ron B]

I do not think it is right to the Festool customers that Recon would sell such an old tool.  That thing is 17 years old!!  Team_kap said it was banged up, so it is not like it was NOS that someone found on the back shelf of a warehouse.  The only logical explanation is this was returned for repairs to Festool then abandoned because repair costs were too high.

I really think Recon should have at least two price levels.  The top level would be items returned in the 30 day window or dealer stock returned to Festool.  The second and much cheaper level should be items returned under 3 year warranty and tools returned for repair then abandoned.  Heck, abandoned tools should be in another third pricing level.  I would be very very aggravated if my 20% savings on Recon gave me a 17 year old tool.  With new at least I get another two years warranty.