Makita vs Hitachi

**gerhard** · 11th April 2009, 12:38 AM

Hi all,

this post is a direct answer to Artme's question and although it is a total deviation of the original topic "Makita vs. Hitachi", i still found this place right underneath Artme's post the best place to put it. For all readers that find this lengthy yarn a nuisance already by looking at it, please ignore and skip it.

Okay then, hi Artme!

The east of Holland, where i was born, is farmer’s terrain and has the longest wintertime in the country, so the fondness of long stories by the fireside runs in many families there, haha. I grew up in a little village called Bredevoort (see fifth pic, it's somewhere on the right), I went to school in the town of Winterswijk and our family often went shopping in Germany, because the border was only 5 miles away.

Winterswijk used to have a lot of textile industry, which is all gone now. There was also an electric motor overhaul workshop, which had the Dutch State Mines as one of their customers, You could see mine lift hoist motors or shaft fan motors taken apart there, waiting to get maintenance or a rewind. Very impressive, as a child you stand there in awe. I was also the sort of kid that spent more time around fairground attractions to figure out how they worked than to sit in them to enjoy the ride. Large construction sites were nice pastimes, too. As a toddler I rode horseback on top off the sled vacuum when my mom did the rooms and already then i stuck my face in the hot airstream to watch the brush spraks somewhere deep inside the exhaust hole. I didn’t miss a second when my dad once took that vac apart to change the brushes and the ball bearings. This interest in technical things never went away. I still stick around in cable car engine rooms in Switzerland, in engine rooms in ships across the English channel, in hydro electric powerplants in the Belgian Ardennes and in locomotive workshops like we have in Tilburg and Haarlem and the museum railway in Hoorn, whenever i get the chance. I even saw a cesium “atomic clock” in the BBC’s long wave transmitter station in Droitwich. Amazing stuff.

Our village had a little wood products factory, with lots of lathes and sanding machines and all sorts of saws. They made furniture components and turned staircase railing spokes from beech and oak and turned handles in all shapes and sizes (for paint brushes, files, levers, etc.). They allowed me inside and go my own way because I behaved and helped clean up sawdust and shavings. I spent a lot of time there and learned handy tricks. I loved the smells of wood and machine lubricants, workshop owners know what I mean. To earn a bit of cash I later helped out in a bicycle repair shop, where I repaired bikes and mopeds and the odd motorcycle. There was also an agricultural machine repair shop, where tractors and combine harvesters were taken apart. I looked around a lot there, too. And then there was the textile factory boiler room across the road where my high school stood.

Winterswijk also had a fairly large railroad station (see first pic), with a direct goods train connection with Borken, Germany. Every morning a long goods train was pulled in by a Deutsche Bundesbahn class 44 or 50, large five-coupled steam engines (see third pic), which were powerful yet almost silent at slow speeds. The smell of coal or oil fire and steam and hot bearing oil is, like the smell of wood workshops, something that you never forget. I skipped many school classes to watch those things shunts all those wagons about until a return train for Borken was composed. I risked a bawling out from the school or my dad, for waiting as long as it took to see the engine leave for Germany again at full pulling power. It always went back in reverse (see third pic) since Winterswijk scrapped its locomotive turntable in the latter 40's, but that didn't matter. The last year before line closure class 218 diesels took over and in the early 80’s the Borken line was gone, leaving Winterswijk station standing in a weeded over and ripped up marshalling yard. Much the same as all over the world, really. Pity.

So the fondness for mechanics and tools started with the fun hours I had in all those workshops from childhood. To have powerful tools and do what your bare hands can’t do, I always found a great thought. My tool collection plans started in 1972, when watching the Black & Decker and Skil and AEG power tools in the windows of the tool shop on the corner of the street where my high school stood. B&D and Skil were too common in Holland, AEG was the German quality brand for me. I already knew AEG’s history and the impressive mine hoist and fan motors in the Winterskwijk motor overhaul shop were sometimes also AEG made (or by Smit, see fourth pic)). AEG also made a lot of fine electric locomotives. By owning a tool from them, you owned a tiny bit of this company, as it were. Collecting electric locomotives or similarly large things is ludacrous and financially risky, but collecting tools is affordable and manageable. Collecting stamps is less weighty and more compact still, but you can't have everything. And should you ever need your money back, quality tools in good condition do not lose much of their value and are easy to sell again. So I stood there and vowed that once I would own the AEG tools that were in that shop window. Now I own more than there have ever been in that entire shop. My collection has exceeded 900 items last year. As a pensioner’s hobby I will make a museum out of them; I made myself vow that, too.

Electric tools are not of much interest to most people, but they reveal a blend of interesting features when you have an open eye for them. Ergonomical insights are soon applied on tools. The improvements of electrical isolation and the increase of energy density in motors, which were meant to crank up power-to-weight-ratio in electric trains, were immediately used in power tools as well. The same goes for electronics for power control. The use of shapes and colours and lettertypes for product marketing puposes is the same for tools as it is for consumer electronics. And the use of modern metallurgy, castings and transmission systems is the same as in the car industry. In other words: in power tools you can see the state of technology and thoughts on their use through the eras, just as you can see this state in collectable sports cars or design household appliances or big machines.

Since there is little point in displaying a collection of dead things without some form of story or description or time line behind them, I also needed to gain background information. I simply had to, if it were only because I won’t be around forever to tell the story myself. When i've kicked the bucket, the people stuck up with this heap of stuff must still be able to make sense of it. So I read books, i join forums like these, i mail with factory people and their own museum setups to gain information and to complete stories and histories as accurate as I possibly can. Factory people are on average very friendly and helpful and forthcoming. Eibenstock people have told me a lot about their East German years when they were Honnecke & Ditter, Fein people from Stuttgart filled me in about the early company years (the brand was as early as B&D to use distinctive colours for product identity), Metabo people did so as well and I had some very nice mail correspondance with B&D about vintage drill and the pistol trigger switch patent. In Mühlacker there is an Elu museum and I have some items here that even they don’t have.

I find it huge fun to share this information with others (like here) and to get useful feedback. The screening of my rantings by others helps me to stay true and on track, and my knowledge gets better and completer for it. In this particular forum I meet the warmest and friendliest of people, Australia and New Zealand must be beautiful places to live!

So there you have it, I like storytelling and tools are an almost lifelong item of interest to me. I took most of my tool brand knowledge from a magazine my dad used to have. He originally studied to be a radio operator on trade and passenger ships. Radio Holland produced transmitter/receiver systems for ships and trained operators for ship owners to take over on their payroll. But then WW II came and the Germans took possession of everything of value in Holland. Their command over Radio Holland would mean that my dad would have to work on German ships, which he refused to do. His dad had a tree nursery, so my dad stopped his radio operator study and returned home to help out his dad and carried on with the nursery ever since. He now enjoys his pension, but can still write along with live morsecode whenever he hears it, as if his study were only yesterday. He knows a lot about electronic circuits and generator sets and electrric motors and such, that must have rubed off on me as well.So my dad had this subscription on Mix magazine, which in Holland is a business-to-business news and add source for the DIY trade, power and gardening tool resellers, ironmongers and machine factories, revealing news on everything from new products, brand histories, firm mergers, marketing systems and trade fairs. He had this mag to keep in touch with the latest ranges of mowers, petrol driven ploughs and rotary weed removers, tractors, hand tools and ironmongery for use in the nursery and to order for his customers. That mag is where much of my tool brand knowledge came from. The rest I hear from contacts in factories and through all sorts sources on the internet.

Sorry again everyone for he length of this yarn, which had nothing to do with the thread topic Makita versus Hitachi.

The added pics:
1. Winterswijk station
2. Steam freight train returning back from Winterswijk to Borken Germany
3. preserved oil-fired Deutsche Bundesbahn class 44 2-10-0 freight engine on static display
4. Smit-built mine shaft lift hoist motors, freshly installed in 1963 in a southern Dutch coal mine (cables yet to be slung around centre hoist wheel)
5. Simple map of the Netherlands: Bredevoort, Winterswijk and Borken are in the East.

Greetings!

gerhard<O

</O

**justinmcf** · 11th April 2009, 02:48 AM

hi gerhard, no need to be sorry mate, keep the yarns coming as long as you like.
i am irish myself and i love a good yarn, the information and knowledge you pass on to me and others is really appreciated.

i am sure if i met you in the local pub we would have a great old time talking about tools.

you have got me thinking, normally i sell my old tools, but maybe i should keep them, maybe they will be collectors items in 30 or 40 years time.

they do show how we work in the present day, no doubt our grand kids will think we were in the stone age in 2009!

keep up the good work,
regards, justin.

**ecsk** · 11th April 2009, 09:32 AM

Gerhard, it is indeed very interesting to read. I can't imagine how could you collect 900 tools

Holland is a beautiful country, I always want to visit but haven't got a chance, and money yet

.

**artme** · 11th April 2009, 10:02 AM

Fascinating Gerhard, and thank you for such a detailed reply.

You are a man after my own heart, a collector of what some call "useless information" Not to worry, it has won me many a trivia contest!

Didn't get to the Netherlands when we in Europe last year, but will next time!

**gerhard** · 15th April 2009, 04:56 AM

Hi Justinmcf, Ecsk, Artme and others!

thrilled to hear that people enjoy my trivia, makes me feel less guilty of misusing all those bytes on the internet! Neil can probably hear from the spinning hard discs in his server where my contribtuions are stored, those are the discs vibrating by the imbalance i caused, hahaha!

As for the vintage Festo tools, Justin, indeed, they may well be amongst the technical antiques of the future. I haven't got one of the first series of the 1951 Festo RTS "Rutscher" ("Glider") orbital sanders, but i do have a few specimens of the same model, made in 1956 and 1962.

A bit about induction motor driven orbital sanders and the RTS types:

Gottlieb Stoll started with a machine repair factory, which catered for the woodworking trade. He recognised that a practical invention (the power cord) was picked up and put to good use for portable tools in several metal working trades like the car industry, foundries and shipyards, but not yet in carpenter's workshops. Machines there were often still stationary and the materials were brought to them to be treated, instead of portable machines taken to the material. Stoll made an electric chain router for making slots, an electric auger deep hole drill and an electric handheld rotary disc sander. In 1951 he and Albert Fezer came up with the orbital sander. The first RTS-series had a machine housing of polishes aluminium, with a black painted hood. This hood contained the seating for the top motor ball bearing and also the integrated handle grip and switch. The black hood and grip became sort of a recognisable trade mark and remained in use until the latter sixties, when the RTS-housing was redesigned. This new housing was made from grey plastic, which seemed like a measure to get rid of the expensive metal casting, but underneath there was still a beautifully built and totally closed induction motor, including extruded aluminium cooling fins like in industrial stationary induction motors.

The first RTS was a huge success, it was rugged and efficient, with ample abrasive power for a mere 250 Watts power input. The silent running of the induction motor was a bonus, but the use of induction motors up till the 50's was nothing new, since brush motors were less reliable in dusty continuous dust ridden applications. Meant for furniture factories and carpenter's shops, these machines would have to be able to run for a whole day and preferably year after year with as little maintenance and time-out costs as possible.

With virtually the same motor design, induction motor driven tools couls be fitted with stators wound either for single or three phase feed. The three phase version of course had the best efficiency and were best suited for heavy long-time use, since the torque and electrical efficiency (less heat and more power from the same Wattage) of three phase motors is much better than those on one phase. Large workshops and factories had three phase power distribution fitted as a standard, so those setups also chose three phase handheld machines wherever possible.

The simplest versions of the one phase sanders had a split phase stator, meaning that the two stator pole surfaces were subdivided into larger sections (main poles) and smaller sections ("offset" or "auxilary" poles), wound with one thick copper short-circuited winding. This winding behaves like a secundary winding in a transformer. It reacts to the magnetic field from the main and power fed windings, which can be compared with a transformer's primary windings, with the only diference that this time the secundary winding is not there to deliver a low output voltage, but to immediately convert its electrical energy back to a reacting magnetic field, with the shorting as an attempt to crank up the amp flow and make the field as strong as possible. The shorted windings lag behind the mains fed windings; when the voltage sine wave peak through those has passed and the voltage returns towards zero level, the shorted secundary windings react to this change and have their peak power shortly after. The power peak in the shorted single windings (only a fraction of one Volt but 50 or more Amps) is immediately converted into a magnetic field, lagging somewhat behind the main magnetic field generated in the main poles. So in the pole surfaces as a whole there is a main magnetic field from the power feed and a lagging field in the "shaded" pole sections from the shorted secundary windings. The induction rotor follows the magnetic field in the direction main field/auxilary field. Shaded pole motors are also used in table fans and other small aplliances. Normally they have poor eficiency, but Festo succeeded in building a good and powerful version in its sanders.

The heavier use and more expensive sander models have capacitors to enhance either start up torque or running efficiency. A capacitor provides a better phase shift then a shorted secundary winding does. The shorted secundary winding reacts quickly and its peak doesn't last long, the lagging effect of a capacitor is better and longer. A cap draws current first and its voltage can only rise when it is almost fully charged. When the feed (mains) voltage drops to zero, the capacitor discharges itself again over the auxilary coils and does so in a longer spread of time. An induction motor with running capacitor has no thick shorted auxiliary windings and shaded/split poles, but separate wound copper wire coils (fed in series by the capacitor) in the stator, with their own pole groups. The later modernised RTS has such a motor, and the RTS-copies from Metabo and Elu and Haffner had this motor type as well.

The predecessor of the running cap motor was the starting cap motor. It also has separate fully wound auxilary coils, but these are not designed to cope with continuous duty. They are meant to provide a strong auxilary field for start up and would heat up and burn within 30 seconds when left switched on, so there is usually a provision to disconnect these windings when the motor has started up and has reached almost full rpm. In small induction motors, typically up to 1/2 hp (older types of washing machines, belt driven fans in air type central heating, etc.), this is achieved by a centrifugal switch. In induction motor sanders the motor housing is too compact to accomodate a centrifugal switch and building it in a miniature way would be too expensive. So the user himself was used to operate the start-up winding at the proper moment, by a double switch. The lever of such a switch consists of two halves. The first half is the main switch, which remains in the "on"- setting when it is clicked "on". This switch part only connects power to the main coils. The other lever half is returned back by a spring when the user lets it loose. This sprung switch half operates the starting capacitor and the auxilary winding. In sanders from Festo, Elu and Metabo, using such a double switch and a start cap motor, a notice on top of the machine prompts the user to let the sprung half of the double switch lever spring back immediately when the motor had run up to full rpm. After start-up, the motor is in fact left to run on its main coils and its main magnetic field only, using its rotor mass to keep up momentum during varying loads. Start cap motors have less efficiency than running cap motors, but in the beginning capacitors for continuous duty were not so reliable and the auxilary winding (made from thinner wire than the main coils) were less heat-resistant than they would now be, because of the quality of the insulating materials of the day. Therefore a motor running only on its rugged main coils was considered to be more robust and better suited to rough use.

Induction motor orbital sanders usually have 2800 to 3000 rpm at 50 Hertz, because their rpm is AC frequency related. At such low rpm, the sanding circle is larger as that from brush motor driven sanders with the same Wattage. This means that the rubber buffers supporting the sanding plate are larger and bulkier, to cope with the heftier circular movements and the higher induction motor weight on top. When an orbital sander is switched off and put away in store, it doesn't rest in a central stressfree position, but the counterweight and excenter and sole assembly always stop somewhere along the circular path. That means that the rubber buffers are always bent out of a neutral straight and relaxed position. When the sander has been stored for years without use, the rubber tends a harden a bit under the influence of air and light and the buffers tend to keep their distorted shape in whichever position the sander has stood still for all those years. A shaded pole motor and a running cap motor often lack the starting torque to overcome the force needed to turn the buffer out of their "memorised" distorted shape. When switched on, the sole is seen to move only a few millimetres and there is the stalled hum from the motor. Don't count on it that the motor will fight itself out of this situation and will start up sooner or later; it just won't and will rather burn. Sometimes this is a lucky streak. An auction seller with little knowledge of this phenomenon will sell the machine as defective since it didn't move when plugged in. You can only hope he hasn't left it switched on like that for too long, but if he hasn't and the motor windings haven't suffered, you can be in for a bargain.

The only dependable solution to get a sander with buffers distorted from idle storgae going again, is to dismantle the sole and turn two of the four buffers 180 degress axially. That way the distortions of either pair of buffers cancel each other out and the motor will on average pull through again on its own. The sole dismantling of this type of sander is relatively simple, the excenter ball bearing driving the sole is usually packed in a rubber shock abosorbing bushing and can be pulled out from the sole plate with relative ease. Be sure to have a slotted screwdriver with a very precise fit. The slotted screw heads on both sides of the rubber buffers can be secured very tightly, often because of oxidation or clogged dirt. When the slot is damaged or partly pried off by a wrong size of screwdriver, say goodbye to the option of ever getting that screw loosened again. Only the later Metabos have hex screw but all Festo sanders with induction motors have slotted screws.

The starting cap motor usually has a slightly higher starting torque and has a higher chance to overcome the resistance of hardened distorted rubber buffers. But remember that the starting windings in such a motor burn even quicker than the windings in the shaded pole and running cap motor types, so watch out if it doesn't start up soon.

The RTS (Rutscher "Schwing" = moving in rounds) had a derivative, moving only to-and-fro (RTH, with "Hub" = stroke). The pair of rubber buffers at the front and the pair at the back (allowing circular movement) were each replaced by a full width rubber slab, allowing only forward and backward movement and prohibiting sideways movement. The back-and-forth-movement was achieved by the usual excenter (only with a somewhat lighter counterweight) and a sort of little piston rod. The RTH is shown in the first pic, it looks very much like the regular RTS. A back-and-forth sander gives ideal results when used parallel to the wood grain. There is hardly any sanding pattern visible, contrary to the tiny circles of an orbital machine, which can be a real headache now and then.

The second pic shows a later RTS sprayed in metallic green, to make it look nicer and to distuingish it visually from other brands. It is from 1967, around that time Festo exprimented with a new housestyle appearance and the overall trend in the industry was, that the polished finish of aluminium was abandoned more and more and replaced by less labour intensive and cheaper paint work anyway.
Many reputable German tool brand were making orbital sanders as well, so Festo put little stickers on top reminding users and buyers that the original Rutscher was thought up in Esslingen and nowhere else. The third pic shows the restyled RTS with modern squared boxlike motor housing. The motor in the modern RTS had a running capacitor for continuous use and had a single sliding switch, connecting both main coils and auxilary coils (with the capacitor in series) with the power supply in parallel mode. The green all metal RTS also has a slider switch. The RTH has the double switch with one half springing back to temporarily engage the start-up capacitor and windings. The grey plastic RTS survived as a model up to the middle 80's. This model has also seen the yellow 70's housestyling and the present blackish blue with green lettering.

As for value: i purchased all three RT-sanders shown through Ebay Germany. The green one was bought last March and it fetched 51 Euros, which would be about 95 AUS Dollars. It works fine but needs a lot of touching up and still it fetched that much. Which goes to show that, yes, if a tool is from a very good brand and has the reputation of a good tool itself, it still has plenty of fans wanting it. Price trends also show a slight upward move, even in these recession times, which would suggest that there is a growing number of people recognising some kind of value in these vintage machines. The plastic RTS machines are still sought after for regular use purposes, because they are very robust and not yet as old as the all metal types. So many of those latest plastic RTS-types on offer change from one everyday use situation to the other when they change ownership and do not yet have a status worth preserving.

The old all metal machines tend to end up in collections more and more, provided they are in decent condition both functionally and visually. So i'm not the only collector, for sure! I had to shell out 63 Euros for the RTH and about 48 for the grey RTS, which would have fetched far more when it were preserved better or had the yellow or black livery. I had to bid up to 83 euros to get the black RTS in the fourth pic, as i remember correctly there were almost 30 bids on it! It doens't look much in the pic but the lighting was too harsh and i asked the owners some questions about it. He said it was in good shape and indeed it was. But imagine: still more than 80 Euros for a machine more than 25 years old, and i had to fight lots of competition to get my fingers on it!

Old Festo sanders do pop up in Ebay Germany on a regular basis, but well preserved items are rare and are snapped up immediately. There is usually as lot of competition when a really nice Festo is on auction. Vintage circular saws from Festo are much rarer still in well preserved shape, since they were typical bread-and-butter machines for the trade, and when one of them hasn't seen lots of use and got preserved in som way, it's pure coincidence or by accident (fallen behind a heavy chest and forgotten or dusted over on some attick). Festo has a peculiar patent on its name for saw depth adjustment: the handle grip on a certain series of models has a ring in which a cylindrical motor and gearbox assembly can rotate axially. Since the arbour is offset from the middle because of the secundary reduction gear (like in a drill), Festo decided to use this arbour offset for saw depth adjustment. I have yet to encounter such a saw in "real life", i haven't even seen an actual picture of one, only a patent drawing. So these are rare beasts indeed.

You guessed right, quality power tools may well be antique items one day. It shows how we did things in our era and how we constructed machines from certain materials. Vintage machines contained more metal and survive in our memory as longer lasting, but their motors and electrical insulation were less hardy and they packed far less energy density (power output per kilo weight) and heat/overload resistance. The best machines ever were made between the 60's and 80's, during this time metal gear cases and sturdy accessories were still justifiable for the bean counters, and electric motors and electronic functions were the best value ever (on average). From the 90's on, the metal got thinner, motors got smaller and hotter and castings were subsituted by plastic moulding wherever this was structurally conventient. Our grandchildren will stand in awe when presented with beautiful all metal machines. How could we ever have the arrogance to squander that much precious metals and labour intensive finishings in one egocentric machine for only one simple dedicated function? Look at the bulk of the motor, look at the complexity of that switch, look at the amount of rare copper spent on such a Flintstone contraption! And be amazed about how much electric energy was necessary to operate it! Blatant crimes, no respect for future reserves whatsoever! So, yes indeed, well preserved power tools will tell a lot about how we went about our hobbies in sheds in the 21st century.

If your old Festo tools still work and look nice, hold on to them ! Holy moly, again strayed miles from the Makita/Hitachi thread topic! I never learn, do i? Okay, Makita has all metal planers worth collecting (i added a pic of their first model 1000) and Hitachi has some very nice vintage drills. There you are, back on track again, but look at the length. You still there? Ludacrous, i've got to stop this

Greetings

gerhard

**VEK TOOLS** · 19th April 2009, 08:11 PM

Hi ecsk,

just looked thru the thread, got a bit scared when i got to the reply by gerhard & almost had a heart attack....if you have any questions on any cordlesses or want me to help you out with some solutions please dont hesitate to email me

**qosmio** · 14th May 2009, 10:15 PM

very interesting story, enjoy reading that.

**flightyswine** · 15th May 2009, 02:26 PM

wow! That was an interesting read!

Thread: Makita vs Hitachi

Thread Tools

Search Thread

Similar Threads

Makita lxt405 or Hitachi kc18dbl Kit whats better

Hitachi M8 for $220 only

GMC Vs Hitachi

Hitachi

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions