Thread: Why did Festool (silently?) drop the BS-105 105mm Belt Sander?

Originally Posted by aarggh

I'd be curious on the numbers for tradies/hobbyists for the different tools. I reckon stuff like the Kapex would mainly be tradies, but I also bet there'd be a lot of hobbyists with Dominos.

Look in a panel shop and see how many vacuums and sanders they have. They have a lot of reps on the road for the sole reason of selling to the trade and the hobbyist never sees those reps as a rule. The domino was picked up very quickly by the trades as it speeds up things so much especially for those doing one offs. I can't answer you question but I would expect trade workshops would have multiple dominos of both sizes.

I am sure Chris is right, but I also do not have figures.

I spoke to a prominent trade teacher a while back and he said:

The problem with Festool is that they are very "stealable". The problem with Ozito is that nobody steals them.

A teaching environment is very hard on tools. Festool is more "student proof" than Makita, Hitachi and Metabo and they are far more "student proof" than the cheapies. Students are very creative in breaking things!

In a commercial workshop, a training establishment is a commercial workshop, tools earn money when they are being used, cost money when they are not being used, and are damned expensive when they cannot be used. Festool usually have less downtime and quicker repairs than their competitors.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

I am sure Chris is right, but I also do not have figures.

I spoke to a prominent trade teacher a while back and he said:

The problem with Festool is that they are very "stealable". The problem with Ozito is that nobody steals them.

A teaching environment is very hard on tools. Festool is more "student proof" than Makita, Hitachi and Metabo and they are far more "student proof" than the cheapies. Students are very creative in breaking things!

In a commercial workshop, a training establishment is a commercial workshop, tools earn money when they are being used, cost money when they are not being used, and are damned expensive when they cannot be used. Festool usually have less downtime and quicker repairs than their competitors.

That's not my own trade school experience. Albeit, not in my wildest dreams could I be described as a "prominent" trade teacher, nevertheless I was employed some years ago as both a Construction casual teacher of VET students & as a Trades Assistant with responsibility for machine & tool repairs & maintenance. One day per week for each respective role.

My particular TAFE's Festool purchases did not respond well to the ineptitude & depredations of Apprentices & VET students alike. In fact, all SEVEN of their Kapexes suffered from gearbox & infrequent guard failures & problems, necessitating regular repair. Sanders didn't appreciate their frequent nosedives to the concrete floor from the workbenches. Jiggies suffered from baseplate bending & fracture. The vacs, by contrast, seemed to perform flawlessly.

By contrast the variety of Makita tools were much more reliable, & much less susceptible to damage from the vicissitudes of youth. I'd suggest that this explains quite succinctly the overall ubiquity of Makita tools used on workplaces in Australia.

I've also noticed that there's now a preponderance of Milwaukee tools used in TAFE these days. How these tools perform is unknown, as I'm no longer involved with trade schools, but those few tools from this brand that I've owned or used, mostly actually older Atlas Copco branded tools that are the red brand's design predecessors, have performed well in my hands. Having said that, I'm not personally a fan of their cordless range, although I notice that it's fairly well represented among tradies.

I'd suggest that overall many Festool products are insufficiently robust to be suited to the rigours of many Aussie workplaces, perhaps being better suited to the "hobby workshop" role than actually true, rough 'n tumble professional trade tools. I consider not just the abovementioned Festool products, but also at least some (but by no means all) of the (24) Festo & Festool products that I've owned over the past 40 odd years to be a little too refined & delicately built to be considered "trade-tough" in a similar manner to the alternatives from Hitachi, Makita, Metabo or Bobbie Bosch et. al.