Orbital Sander Advice

[Craig-SM]

I would highly recommend using vacuum dust extraction with any sander.
Not only for your health and less mess but for sanding disc life. Without extraction a disc will clog up long before it wears out.
With extraction you can wear a disc out to the backing paper.

It's also worth buying good quality abrasives like 3m and mirka. They may seem expensive but they will outlast cheap ones many times over.

Just be careful to buy discs with the same hole pattern as your backing pad. There are several variations of hole pattern.

I found this when I bought a Festool dust extractor. I was using Trend sanding discs, which are decent quality, but were still clogging up. With the Festool attached the discs would actually wear out but it took much, much longer and there was hardly any dust in the air even though we’d used a dust collector.

The Festool was another tool that got the wife’s seal of approval.

I’m finding the mesh sanding discs to be very good but again quality varies but managed to get some 50 packs of Milwaukee ones cheap and they’ve been very good. Their sanding belts and discs have always been very good but overpriced. No doubt they’re made by another manufacturer and just rebranded.

 

[Kram]

Opened it up. Small 540 sized motor with little cooling, so I imagine it wont survive too long - all designed so they could call it brushless and hide it. To be fair its not bad for the price but the advert was dishonest.

Unlike my other orbital sander, this one can be held stationary and just vibrates. The other, I seem to remember, is a lot stronger in rotation, but it does have a significantly larger brushed motor..

Its being returned.


However it does appear identical to Makita's DBO180, which shows the same design on the parts list.

 

[Ruffian]

So got the m12 5mm da.
Really nice, a little bulky compared to air but is handy.

Used it to prep the walls prior to decorating and linked it to Henry for dust extraction.

Same again if prepping small panels would use the 75mm air sander I have, but anything wing mirror size and bigger would be happy using this one.

 

[Kram]

Ebay currently has 20% off offer, usually quite a few tool sellers take part. None have either the Makita BO003CGZ (or other variations) or the M12's

I want to buy the M12FSDR75 but will need it to work with a dust bag. Wondering if a small addition of a fan blade to the rotor would do it?

Heres a pic from the video I linked on another page, showing the 6". Theres possibly space for a 3d printed tpu fan over the counterweight.