Random Orbit Sander Buying Advice

You know, back in the day, as people like to say. When I was doing woodworking in commercial shops, it was very common that we used a DA sander, dual action sander, hooked up to a big air compressor, and they really worked well. And over time, these things have evolved and found their way electrically powered into our shops that we use today. And what I'm talking about here is random orbit sanders. So first, what's the deal with a random orbit sander? Well you know that if I take a sanding disc like this, and I power it up, I can very, very quickly remove a lot of material. It's real aggressive way to sand. The downside is that because of that rotary motion, it's really gonna leave a lot of swirl marks in my work. If I use a sander, that's only got an oval motion to it. They leave a better surface finish but they're not very fast. So part of what random orbit sanders bring to your project is that they spin like a disc sander does. But they also move in an oval motion, a random motion. So what's gonna happen here is that we're overriding the scratch marks thereby not leaving behind a lot of scratch marks. So that's what the name means. Random orbit, very literal. It's spinning it's orbiting. It's also going in that random motion so that your scratch pattern is never an exactly the same spot. That's what gives you a real good surface finish. So what you know now is yeah, random orbit sander sounds like a pretty good idea. I think I wanna have one. What should I look for? Couple things here first, let's talk about size. Commonly people look at five inch random orbit, six inch random orbit. So what that's referencing is the diameter of the disc. Now in broad brush strokes we can say, "How big a project do you wanna remove material from?" If I'm commonly working on big tabletops, then I want a lot of surface area on my sander so that I can affect a lot of that surface at one time. And things are gonna go a little bit faster for me. If I commonly work on smaller projects I'm probably gonna default to the smaller disk size in order to have a smaller and slightly easier to control machine. Now, in the best of both worlds, you can also shop for sanders like this one that are capable of removing one pad. Swapping it, so that I can have a five inch or six inch sander. And I can just go back and forth between the two depending on what project I'm working on right now. Another place kind of a line in the sand people run into is. Do I want a sander that's got a two hand grip on it like this. And with that six inch pad on there I like having two grips on there. Gives me real good control, especially with that big pad. Making sure I can keep that sander nice and flat on my work. But when I go down to that five inch pad, I kind of liked being able to remove this handle. And part of the reason for that can be that when you wanna work right up against a wall or inside a cabinet. The inside of the cabinet carcass itself, sometimes not having a handle on there is beneficial allowing the pad to get in tighter and the inside corners. So again, in the world of buying advice, one thing to do here is just handle different kinds of sanders. Another thing to do is look for a machine that gives you the capability of removing the handle on the front when you don't wanna use it so that you can get it out of the way. Now, of course, when we sand, we're gonna make dust and we're gonna make real fine dust. You don't wanna be breathing that stuff in. So our first layer of protection is making sure that the machine has got good filtration on it. That's easy to get on and off. In here inside the filter box itself, we've got a pleated filter. That's gonna give you a lot of life here because pleated filters offer a lot of surface area. So it's not gonna clog up with that fine dust real quickly on it. My preference is when I'm doing a lot of sanding instead of using the onboard filtration, I'd like to be hooked up to a vacuum that's gonna actually extract the dust completely away from where I'm working. In that case, you wanna make sure that your sander's capable of taking a dust port like this one. That's able to hook up to a lot of different size of vacuums so that whatever size hose you're using, you know you're gonna be able to connect it to the sander when you're using it. Another feature that's real handy to have and worth shopping for is variable speed. Now, commonly on your woodworking projects, you're probably just gonna run this on full boar. But when I'm sanding something that's real fragile. For instance, if I'm working on a vineyard material, it's likely that I'll slow this down, and what I'm worried about is sand through. So if I stand on that aggressive setting, I'm increasing the likelihood of sand through, because it's taken material off pretty quickly. If I slow this down to a lower RPM, it's gonna give me a little bit more control. The other place this is handy is if you ever work with materials that are prone to suffering from heat buildup. For instance, if you're gonna sand a plastic or an acrylic, then running this on a lower RPM is gonna prevent that heat buildup so that you sand instead of melting your material. The other thing that's huge with these is how easy they are to hold onto. And what I mean by that is how much vibration is it transferring from the sander into you. So the best advice I can offer there is do your sander shopping some place where you can plug them in, and you can run them so that you can get a good feel in a side by side comparison of how one sander operates versus next one. And again, what you're looking for there is a machine that does not transfer a lot of vibration up into your hands. That's gonna let you work longer and it's gonna be better for you. Last feature I like to talk about is the ability to lock that trigger in a nine position. When I'm working on a big surface, again like a tabletop, I'll lock that on so that I don't have to squeeze that trigger all the time and just let the sander do its thing increasing the surface quality as I'm doing my sanding. So lots of good points to look for here. Random orbit sanders, these days, pretty much a must have tool for your shop. Make sure that you shop for each of those individual items to get the sander that's best for you and your woodworking.