Thread: Arbortech Contour Random Sander

I bought one at the recent WWW show in Sydney and have given it a trial run and all is good. Remember in making one that the function is a random orbital effect.
The idea of the sticky back disc and using the plastic cover to replace when finished for re-use, I guess is to compete with the re-usable velcro backed sanding discs. I suppose you could glue velcro
to the rubber disc and then use the velcro backed discs, if that is $s better. I think that they need to have a wider range of discs say 100 thru to 400. Current range is a bit limited. Also the attachment fits only angle grinders and not their mini-grinder, which hs its own sanding mechanism. Hope this helps. Drillit..

Oh. Cool. I needed that a couple of months ago. Ended up getting an air powered ROS from america. A Grex Random orbital sander. That works great. This looks like it would be a goody as well. Quit a good price. Maybe I'll get one of these as well as I haven't got a compressor myself and have to use it at someone elses workshop. One good thing though is that it is no where near as heavy as a grinder. Even with an air hose hanging off it.


Drills and Pnuematic Sanders « www.VincesWoodNWonders.com

Originally Posted by tea lady

Oh. Cool. I needed that a couple of months ago. Ended up getting an air powered ROS from america. A Grex Random orbital sander. That works great. This looks like it would be a goody as well. Quit a good price. Maybe I'll get one of these as well as I haven't got a compressor myself and have to use it at someone elses workshop. One good thing though is that it is no where near as heavy as a grinder. Even with an air hose hanging off it.


Drills and Pnuematic Sanders « www.VincesWoodNWonders.com

Looks OK.
Get yourself an air compressor, useful to check and inflate car, bicycle and wheelbarrow tyres plus any other air tools you acquire.

Well I have given the sander a bit of a run over the weekend in a few different situations.

The initial fitting of the sander to the grinder was so simple it isn't really worth going over. The first task was to give it a quick run over a rough red gum burl which had been roughed out with the Arbortec grinding disk previously. With the 60 grit paper on the sander it did a good job at removing the marks left by the grinding disk. It took a little while to work out the best angle to hold the sander against the work, but after a few minutes I was starting to get a hang of things. The 60 grit paper wore down fairly quickly, but it was sanding red gum. It was less aggressive than I thought it would have been which was good. There obviously isn't any dust extraction but the sander didn't really throw out the dust too far.

The next task was more delicate - sanding bandsaw boxes. This was not something that the sander was being marketed as being used for but I thought it would be worth a go. The sander size was a huge advantage here over the 150mm dia Metabo ROS I previously used. I did find it somewhat difficult to control as the shaft of the sander spins so you are forced to hold onto the grinder body which feels like it is some distance from the sander head when doing delicate work. As the sander body spins I did find it often marked previously sanded areas when getting into tight spots. It would be handy if there was some sort of stationary sleeve that could slip over the sander shaft so that you would hold the grinder much closer to the head of the sander.

I did find the sticky disks to be a real drag. It was much more time consuming to change the sanding grits over the Velcro system. You have to take off and replace the backing when changing the disks, keeping track of which grit disk came from which bag and making sure the backing is back on so it doesn't get dusty. If you are spending some time on one grit it isn't too bad but I often find that I need to concentrate on one area of the project through different grits before moving back to other areas at lower grits.The disks did stick well and the edges remained firm to the sanding pad. Often with Velcro I find the edges do not grip overly well and any heat build up reduces the effect of the Velcro which shouldn't be an issue with the sticky disks.

As for the quality of finish. I alternated between the 150mm dia ROS on the flat areas of the project and the Arbortech on the curved sections, matching the grits. I found that it was possible to overlap the two areas with the Arbortech without any noticeable change in quality of finish - this lead me to believe that the quality of the "random" function of the Arbortech was considerable and did leave a better finish.

Overall I am happy with the purchase. It will certainly do a good job on carved bowls and the like (which it seems to be designed for). For the other tasks, like the bandsaw boxes it will slip in as a handy sander in certain situations, not replacing the ROS or spindle sander but just providing another alternative. I am still keen to try it out to finish a complete burl bowl as I think it would really be in its element for that job.

Cheers

Stinky