Sanders - flatness of pad while orbiting?

I believe manufacturers found that without the up and down motion the tools
were less satifactory when used as massagers :)

Matthew

<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Here is an interesting question - something to try an experiment with.
> Hold a palm sander upside down against a bright, uniform background and
> turn it on. (Careful!) Examine the edges of the pad. Does the pad move
> in a plane? That is, does the "blur" you see caused by the pad movement
> stay in a flat plane or is there some up-and-down component to it? I
> tried this with a cheap finishing sander and it seemed to be flat, but
> when I tried it with my new Bosch 1295 I could see that the pad did not
> stay absolutely flat. There was a noticeable up-and-down component to
> it.
>
> Any comments or experiences?
>
> -Ram.
>

On 22 Dec 2004 13:19:00 -0800, [email protected] wrote:

>Here is an interesting question - something to try an experiment with.
>Hold a palm sander upside down against a bright, uniform background and
>turn it on. (Careful!) Examine the edges of the pad. Does the pad move
>in a plane? That is, does the "blur" you see caused by the pad movement
>stay in a flat plane or is there some up-and-down component to it? I
>tried this with a cheap finishing sander and it seemed to be flat, but
>when I tried it with my new Bosch 1295 I could see that the pad did not
>stay absolutely flat. There was a noticeable up-and-down component to
>it.


Well, since the cheap finishing sander is, well, cheap, and
a Bosch by name-definition is good, I don't think that you're
likely to get an opinion that the former is working properly
and the latter isn't :-)

> Any comments or experiences?
>

No offense, please.

You need to start a challenging woodworking project.