What makes the Festool sanders better than other brands?

[Holmz]

One could argue that the ETS/EC are an improvement over the Mirka as they are essentially a copy and came after the mirka.
I have a mirka... and the ETS/EC seemed pretty good when I tried it. For a staring out machine one can hardly do better. Unless they actually know what they are going to be doing and then know which saner type they need. (The fellow has not come back though)

The RO was usable, but a beast of a thing.
Personally I would rather get a belt sander as I prefer to end up with flat pieces.

 

[Nat X]

We have festool and mirka sanders, the festools gather dust sitting on shelves while the mirka sanders are used daily.

So what? I've got a great guitar amplifier that's gathering dust on a shelf. That says more about me than it does about the amp.

Nobody wants to sell Mirkas here after the multiple safety recalls. The power bricks were always weird and the paddle speed control is even weirder if you're trying to maintain a consistent amount of removal over a large flat surface. In the automotive world of blending various contours into one another, it's a different story.

Fine grits of Abranet are much better than Granat paper at polishing polyurethane and cyanoacrylate as they don't load up as quick. The coarser ones become useless real quick in my experience and aren't worth the cost or trouble of seeking out at all. Abralon is demonstrably every bit as good as Festool's Vlies pads and about 1/4 the cost. The rest is all personal preference.

 

[yetihunter]

Festool are still some way behind Mirka when it comes to sanders. Mirka still the daddy by a long shot  8)

Yes, so true.  According to the North American recalls,  the Mirka's even save you money on your heating bill.  [big grin]

I love their sandpaper, though.  Even when it says Festool on it.

We have festool and mirka sanders, the festools gather dust sitting on shelves while the mirka sanders are used daily.

Abranet sanding disks outlast and outperform festool disks, they're a dream to use on flush veneered panels.

Abranet is great stuff!

 

[Bob D.]

My first Festool was a RO125 I bought 6 years ago along
with a CT36. Since then I have added a RTS400 and between
the two my other sanders see little use.

 

[Sazerac819]

Buy a RO 150 if you are sanding down large slabs or surfaces.  Very powerful in geared rotex mode and can strip off wood very aggressively with very little noticeable dust in the air and on the surface of the work. 

If you get the Rotex 150, I would strongly suggest the additional curved front handle which greatly helps stabilization during aggressive sanding.  I use granat sandpaper with the rotex 150 with both the blue hard sanding pad (for flattening) and the white sanding pad that comes with the rotex when I am not as worried about flattening a surface. 

I've owned a bunch of cheapy sanders, but the purchase of the festool Pro 5 ltd was the gateway tool into the festool sanders.  So smooth and so dust free.  I use both granat and also the abranet sanding discs on the pro 5 ltd to good effect.  The holes don't line up very well for the abranet protector pad, but I find that dust extraction is still very good.  I may punch some holes in the protector pad to line up better with the jetstream holes of the festool sanding pad.   

Cheers,
John

 

[joinercp]

So what? I've got a great guitar amplifier that's gathering dust on a shelf. That says more about me than it does about the amp

Multiple festool and mirka sanders are available to our shop joiners and finish team, they use the mirka's.  We started out with Bosch sanders then bought a few festools which were great so we bought some more.... they are a very good sander.  After a trial with Mirka we started to purchase them and now the Bosch and festools are no longer used.