What is a sander?
A sander is a power tool used to smooth wood and automotive or wood finishes. Sanders have a means to attach the sandpaper that does the work. Woodworking sanders are usually operated by electrical power while the ones used in auto-body repair work on compressed air.
Sander Type
- Belt sander (hand-held or stationary)
- Disc sander: A disc sander is a machine that consists of a circular sand paper covered wheel being electrically spun around. It is sat between two benches- the one on the front is used to put your work on. The one at the back houses the machinery that spins the wheel around. It is used chiefly to sand wooden objects so that they have smoother edges. To use, press the piece of wood up against the spinning disc gently. Turn over and do the same again.
- Oscillating spindle sander
- Random orbital sander
- Orbital sander
- Stroke sander
- Drum sander
Random Orbital Sander
Random orbit sanders, also called Dual-Action sanders (referring to the rotation of the disk and the head) are hand-held power sanders where the action is a random orbit. They were first introduced in the early 1990s and quickly became tremendously popular. Random orbit sanders combine almost the speed and aggressiveness of a belt sander, with the ability to produce a finer finish than that available from a standard, slow speed, orbital finishing sander.
Because of its unique random sanding action, the tool does not leave swirl marks, and it is not sensitive to the direction of the wood grain. This makes it work very well when sanding two pieces of wood that meet at right angles. Random-orbit sanders use sandpaper disks and many random-orbit sanders now come with dust collectors. Disks are attached using either pressure sensitive adhesives or a hook and loop system. On models equipped with a dust collection feature, a vacuum effect sucks sanding dust through holes in the paper and pad, feeding it to a bag or canister.
Belt Sander
A belt sander is a machine used to quickly sand down wood and other materials for finishing purposes. It consists of an electrical motor that turns a pair of drums on which a seamless loop of sandpaper is mounted. Belt sanders can be either hand-held, where the sander is moved over the material, or stationary (fixed), where the material is moved to the sanding belt. Stationary belt sanders are sometimes mounted on a work bench, in which case they are called bench sanders. Stationary belt sanders are often combined with a disc sander.
Belt sanders can have a very aggressive action on wood and are normally used only for the beginning stages of the sanding process, or used to rapidly remove material. Sometimes they are also used to for removing paints or finishes from wood. Fitted with fine grit sand paper, a belt sander can be used to assure a completely smooth surface.
Stationary belt sanders are used for removing non-ferrous metals, such as aluminum. Non-ferrous metals tend to clog grinding wheels, quickly making them useless for grinding soft metals, while belt sanders continue to grind without clogging. This is because the small grooves in the sand paper are opened up as they go around the arc of the drive wheel.
Belt sanders can vary in size from the small hand-held unit shown in the illustration to units wide enough to sand a full 4-by-8 foot sheet of plywood in a manufacturing plant. Some belt sanders can be as tall as 1.2 metres and 70 centimetres long.
Sanding wood produces a large amount of sawdust. Therefore, belt sanders employed in woodworking are usually equipped with some type of dust collection system. It may be as simple as a cloth filter bag attached to a portable sander or a large vacuum system to suck dust particles away into a central collector.
Racing
Belt sanders were one of the first power tools used in the growing field of power tool drag racing wherein a pair of stock or modified belt sanders are placed in parallel wooden channels and fitted with long extension cords. Each heat begins when a common switch or individual switches triggered by the racers energizes them, causing the sanders to race towards the end of the track spitting wood dust along the way. Stock sanders race down a 50' long track, while modified sanders race on a 75' long track.
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