When you feel your air-powered sander's rate of cut slow down, it could be telling you, 'I'm Thirsty.' After operating a woodworking air tool repair service center for 10 years, repairing and rebuilding thousands of sanders of various brands, I put together a summary of the most often [...]
I visited a hardwood finishing components manufacturer today because they were going through a lot of 80 grit belts on their 3 head planer sander (planer, drum, combi running 80,120). The customer was extremely confused because the belts were leaving polished shiny marks tracking with the belt. [...]
Anyone who has run a random orbital sanding machine is familiar with swirl marks, the radial scratches that stem from the orbital pattern of the sander itself. The random orbital sanding machine has two types of movements; the rotation at the main spindle and the orbiting of the [...]
This is a story of a machine and two different ways of getting the job done. Both methods sound very similar at the outset, but the effect on the wood is not. Recently, I visited a customer in Rochester, NY. I was working for Flex-Trim (my former employer) on [...]
I’m writing this article to start a conversion in the minds of the readers and the industry in general. I’ve been blessed in my career to have seen literally thousands of sanding processes and nearly the same number of variations on why things are done certain ways. This has [...]
This is a very difficult article to write without making some folks angry and some absolutely irate. Machinery salesmen have a vested interest in selling the machines they have on the floor instead of the machine the customer needs. What is worse is that those same people often [...]