Strangest thing in the woodcraft flyer

[Paul G]

Seth your correct.  In all counts.  As far as my traveling with the tools.  I have a racked out sprinter, all my vacs have a home.  They dont fly around in the van.  These vacs have all broken from normal use. Believe me, I take good care of my festools.

Unfortunately 'normal use' isn't particularly measurable. You'd probably think I baby my tools but for me that's normal. So far my 2 vacs are doing fine, but I don't recall them ever even tipping over. Mine aren't being transported much in vehicles either. With very different conditions my breakage is 0/2 while yours is 5/5 so it's reasonable to think it is related to something you are doing differently in your normal use. Clearly your normal use exceeds the strength of their design, but without knowing the exact circumstances of the breakages it's not easy to assign responsibilty.

 

[Brice Burrell]

Seth your correct.  In all counts.  As far as my traveling with the tools.  I have a racked out sprinter, all my vacs have a home.  They dont fly around in the van.  These vacs have all broken from normal use. Believe me, I take good care of my festools.

Unfortunately 'normal use' isn't particularly measurable. You'd probably think I baby my tools but for me that's normal. So far my 2 vacs are doing fine, but I don't recall them ever even tipping over. Mine aren't being transported much in vehicles either. With very different conditions my breakage is 0/2 while yours is 5/5 so it's reasonable to think it is related to something you are doing differently in your normal use. Clearly your normal use exceeds the strength of their design, but without knowing the exact circumstances of the breakages it's not easy to assign responsibilty.

I like to bring up cordless drills when the topic of normal use/abuse comes up.  No one would say a fall from 6-8 feet is normal use, yet cordless drills are designed to withstand these kind of falls.  For the casual home shop woodworker your drill might fall off your work bench under normal working conditions.  A contractor like me, well my drills have fallen off a roof on more than one occasion.  That is the kind of normal working conditions my tools are subjected to daily.  High end tools made for professional use should be held to a high standard, even under hard working conditions.

Hose garages certainly can break, but we don't have a lot of reports of them. While there are exceptions to every rule, they usually break from rough usage and accidents. I'll continue to look into it and see if there's a larger quality issue that needs to be addressed, but so far this doesn't seem to be a common problem.

   

I've had (minor) breaks in 2 of 6 hose garages.  I am very careful with the vacs because I know the garage is a weak point on the vac.  My point, I have two damaged garages that have gone unreported to Festool.  I'm sure I'm not alone.  I wouldn't be surprised if there are 20 broken garages for every one call Festool gets.

 

[grbmds]

Just out of curiosity and not to make a point but, what happens that causes the damage? I've never had a problem with mine, but I don't put it in and out of a truck and just use it in the workshop.

 

[nickao]

Let's be real..."no way?" We all work under different circumstances... none of my vacs (3) have broke but shite  happens, and not all working situations are the same.

Yeah no way for NORMAL use. And Ill stick to that . Normal use is sucking up dust not something smacking up agsint the unit.  If I go to attach the hose and the plastic cracks that's normal use. If it tips over that's normal use. If I go to plug in the hose and the hose breaks at the fitting or at the vac that's normal use. I have had these vacs for 9 years and several models along the way. NONE and I mean NONE have broken from "normal" use.

Now I had a unit, one that even  looked like one of the pictures. And how it got that way was not what I consider normal use.  It was an apprentice that was dragging it up a ladder and banged it against the wall. He says well it should not have broken I didn't hit it that hard, it cost to much it should not break that easy, blah blah blah. To me that was his carelessness, NOT normal use. This type of scenario is the only way these crack and to me that is not normal use. These are DUST COLLECTORS, NOT shop vacs. I never understood anyone that even buys them to do basic clean up.  I dont let others touch any of my nicer tools anymore.

I could of come on here and complained, but I realize these are dust collectors, not shop vacs. And if I had a brain and was I thinking at that time I would never had let that apprentice use a very expensive CT to go up top and clean up. That was ON ME. Now my CT's all stay where they are best suited, connected to a sander. AND my 100.00 rigid vacs are for general clean up. The Rigid can take a beating the CT never could and are designed to be banged around.

 

[antss]

Mine cracked while pushing around with a couple of systainers attached, just like shown in the catalogs.

[member=57769]TylerC[/member]  - I'd consider that normal use, not an accident.  And I didn't bother to tell you guys about it either.  What kind of failure rate have you extrapolated out of your spare parts sales ? 10%, 4%, less than 1/2% ?  If really low , then c'est la vie.  But if you've 10+ % then you should really go back to the drawing board.

 

[Paul G]

I never understood anyone that even buys them to do basic clean up. 

My mini is used in the house more than the shop, my wife likes its noise level and I like having it as a second vac in the shop when I want one dedicated to a tool for a time.

 

[nickao]

I never understood anyone that even buys them to do basic clean up. 

My mini is used in the house more than the shop, my wife likes its noise level and I like having it as a second vac in the shop when I want one dedicated to a tool for a time.

Yeah Ill give you that the mini and the midi are not CT that I refer to.

I never liked either of those smaller unit, I fill them up twice a day. Heck I filled up my CT 48 in 2 days this week. I just cant use those little guys, but if you are going to use a Festool for clean up those are pretty nice. And I dont see the wife abusing it like a labor worker would. BUT those smaller hoses aren't really that great for larger chips in the shop, get clogged pretty quick over here. So maybe those are best for the house, hehe. Still cheaper than a Dyson.