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I picked up the RO 125 EQ from Tim about a week ago. After some back and forth debate on my current need I decided to go with the Rotex.
I will probably be banished to sawdust purgatory by the woodworking gods but my first job with the Rotex was stripping paint off a brick wall. I originally was going to go with the full time rotary RAS 115 but as I will have some actual wood to sand some day I went with the RO 125. I also scored some Saphir 24 grit disks.
Mind you I intially tried some heavy duty chemical stripper on this and it took off one layer at a time and not very well at that. There were 3 coats to deal with plus the mess so it really wasn't an appealing option. Neither was the angle grinder or belt sander. Holy cloud of dust, Batman!
The Rotex performed just as I expectated it to....Superbly. In rotary mode with the rhino hide like Saphir disks the paint just did a disappearing act.
I stripped a 4' x 8' area in a little over 3 hours of total time. It took a little bit longer than I expencted due to the bricks being very non-uniform with very few flat faces.
I set the speed to 6 with full bunny suction on my CT 22. I applied very little pressure to the tool just basically keeping it on the wall. The Saphir paper (and I intentionally checked this several times) just got a little bit warm after 10-15 minutes of continuous sanding. I used 3 disks for this job but could have got by with 2. And there's still some life in the ones I used.
The was definitely a 2 handed job and the RO 125 really felt like it was almost custom molded to my hands. Considering the agressive grit I was using and being in the Rotex mode the sander was fairly easy to control but I did need to keep my mind on the task at hand. (It really wasn't that big of a divot in the ceiling. I swear.)
Considering what I was sanding the dust collection was very good. I could not keep the pad of the sander intentionally flat on the surface much due to alot the undulating surface but I would estimate at least 75% of the dust and debris was collected. What was not sucked away dropped down to the floor.
The BIG bonus here is that I did not have to deal with a cloud of fine airborne dust. While I didn't do a scientific test on this I had my CT 22 about 3-4 feet away from the wall and I did't see anything more than a few paint chips on top of it that escaped. I did run my finger across the top of it and I had to look very closely to see that there was a very, very small amount of dust on the top.
I did sand some wood (white pine and red oak) just for fun using both sanding modes on both vertical and flat on a bench and without a doubt 99%+ of the dust was extracted. In random orbit mode using Brilliant 220 it reminded me a little bit of playing air hockey.
All in all I would say that this is a great little sander acutally will make sanding an enjoyable task and I am looking forward to putting it through it paces on future jobs not involving paint and brick.
Rating:  [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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