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Festool sander vibration figures

4305 Views 14 Replies 8 Participants Last post by  DaninVan
Hi
does anyone know what the vibration figures of the above random orbit sanders are please? Where are the figures for all brands of these tools recorded?
regards
Peteroo
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you'll have to call or email Festool..
I'd guess you'd have to do an exhaustive search of tool reviews.
Probably faster to go to a tool supply house and try them yourself.
How do you even quantify that factor?
Frankly, I like to wear a woven polyester glove when I'm using a hand sander; it breathes well and acts as an anti-vibration isolator.
Bosch has a couple of sanders with anti-vibration pads built into them. I own 1 and the difference is remarkable compared with sanders that do not have this feature.

Bosch ROS65VC-6


CAD-Man
Bosch anti vibration gloves too...
It's not science, but I used the Bosch, which was an upgrade for me. Then, I switched to Festool, and my hands never felt better. Haven't tried gloves, but see no need to, either.

For flat surfaces, I use the 6" RO 150 FEQ Rotex. I only use the Rotex feature after a bad end grain glue up, really. The normal mode is all I need to flatten my cutting boards & serving pieces. The 6" pad is 20% larger than the 5", and that's a material difference in a volume business. It's a heavy beast ... which is why I also bought another.

For edges, corners, and quick jobs, I use the ETS EC125/3 EQ 5" Random Orbit Sander. The weight is fantastic. I still get hand fatigue if I do a particularly long session of edge sanding, but it's not about the vibration. Again, this sander was a huge upgrade.

Pairing both sanders with a dust extractor has eliminated almost all of the dust in my shop from the finish sanding process.

So, yes, I've drunk the Kool Aid. I know Festool is not cheap, but my only regret is that I waited so long to buy them.
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It should be on their web site - it certainly is on all the European Festool web sites as it is a legal obligation to supply the data over here so that employers can make HAV dosage evaluations. For example take a look at the Festool UK web site entry for the Festool Rotex RO150, here, and scroll down to noise and vibration values. The figures you are looking for are "Uncertainty (vibration) K" and "Total vibration average, Ah" which can be plugged into a Health & Safety Hand Arm Vibration Exposure Calculator such as the one we use on the UK HSE website, here(downloads as a XLS spreadsheet file).
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Buncha wusses... ;)
Thanks, Dan! So how is the vibration white finger these days?
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Buncha wusses... ;)
...besides...once your hand goes numb, you can't feel the vibrations anyway... 😄
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Exactly, Nick! Next thing you know, they'll be taking away their hammers... ;)
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A couple of years back I was on a job where we needed to cut a lot of old timbers out, really big section stuff, so out came the recip saws. The H&S guy walked up and told us that we would have to full-out HAV (hand arm vibration) forms for our usage. We dutifully looked up the figures on the Bosch web site, filled in the HSE spreadsheet..... and reached the conclusion that our combined exposure each day was around 48 minutes in total.......
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