Thread: air V electric sandes

Originally Posted by Tonto

Travelling through the long-white cloud country at present, hell didnt realise I'd miss this place so much.
Anyway seeing the NZ Kauri and its wonders got me thinkin Ive got a Festool ROS would I be better off using an air powered ROS and then petrol or electric compressered This will be mainly on Redgum and WA Kauri.

2nd Q Can I buy recycled Rimu in Australia?

This has been discussed many times on the forum. Air sanders are for shops that already have big compressor running with plenty of capacity. Running them off a small or even medium compressor means continual compressor noise and they also waste a lot of energy. Basically you are much better off with the festool.

Yes, the efficiency of air driven tools is miserable. They are mainly used in heavy and intensive applications, in factories in shifts, or in situations where frequent overloading and stalling would damage electric tools. The power needed to compress sufficient air for one sander would power two to three electric ones. Festo is also a great name in air driven tools (Festool is the rebranded name for just their electric tools, the overall Festo brand name is reserved for the air product range), but even the Festo air driven sanders offer far less efficiency than the Festool electric ones. So electric is more economical, running such a tool on a generator would require far less petrol than running the air equivalent on a petrol driven compressor.

regards

gerhard