Festool Sanders, RO 150, RO 150 E, ETS 125, ETS 150/5 User Manual

Getting the Most from Festool Sanders

Text and photos by Jerry Work

It is always fun to watch visitors who come into my small gallery and studio
as they approach the fine furniture I design and hand craft. Unlike those
who stand back to look at flat art or sculpture, when looking at furniture
most people move quickly to a piece and invariably move their hands
across the surface while they take in the piece with their eyes from up
close. They might pause
to ask if it is OK to touch
the pieces first, but once
they know they can, the
tactile urge takes over.

At some point the question
is always asked, “what
kind of finish do you use?”
It does not make any dif­ference if it is a flat oil
based finish or a highly
polished mirror-like finish,
they seem to think the
silky tactile feel is some­how accomplished by the
application of a magic
elixir.

While the choice of finish
material is important to
achieving the desired
overall look and feel, the
far more important factor
is how the raw wood was
prepared before the appli­cation of the finish material. And, that is what this manual is all about.

I thought long and hard about how best to organize this discussion. The sanders are
the machines which move the abrasive in a defined manner. The abrasives themselves
do all the cutting and shaping. However, in the process of cutting and shaping they also
produce a great deal of dust which can be quite harmful for the operator.

Festool wisely developed these three systems to work together: the sander, the abra­sives and the dust collection components. Used together these not only make the
sanders more efficient and productive for the user but also greatly reduce the danger­ous airborne particulate matter, making the work far safer and healthier and the tools
more pleasant to use day in and day out.

Finally, to make matters a bit more potentially confusing, as we come to understand
these different systems, there are at least three major standards by which the “grit” on
the sanding media are measured. So what is called 1000 grit by one standard is called
800 by another and 500 by still another “standard!”

All of these are important to getting the most from Festool sanders so I decided to or­ganize this manual by first talking about the differences between the three grit “stan­dards,” then talking about the dust collection systems and how they work together with
the sanders, then talking about the differences between the several different kinds of grit
media supplied by Festool, and then, finally, talking about the sanders themselves.

So, let’s go......

Three Different Grit “Standards”

GRIT COMPARISION CHART

MICRON US CAMI

FEPA 'P'
(Festool)

JAPAN JIS

500 36 36 36
430 40
410 40
350 50 40
320 50
300 50
270 60
260 60
250 60
210 70
197 80
192 80
177 80
156 100
149 90
140 100
127 120 100
116 120

97 150 120
93 150
78 180 180 150
66 220 220 180
60 240 240
52 240 280 280
46 320 320
42 280
40 360 360
35 320 400 400
30 500
28 360 500
25 600 600
21 400 800 700
18 500 1000 800
15 600 1200 1000
13 800 1500 1200
10 1000 2000 1500

8 1200 2500 2000
7 2500
6 3000

and all.

In building fine furniture more than 50%
of one’s time goes into sanding, final as­sembly, buffing and polishing. The sand­ing part alone can take more than twice
the amount of time that it
took to machine all the
component parts of
the piece. Yet,
sanding processes,
tools and materials
are seldom as
carefully chosen as
are the machines
that cut the wood
components in the
first place.

Sanding, after all,
is just using some
kind of hard mate­rial to abrade the
surface fibers of
the wood, shearing
them off to leave a
smooth feel to the
surface. Simple to
say, but hard to do
well. As you
abrade the surface
you also scratch
the surface. If
those scratch
marks are large
enough, they will
detract from, not add to the appearance
of the final product.

So, the trick is to learn how to use smaller
and smaller particles of the hard material
to remove the larger scratches and leave
smaller and smaller scratches until they
no longer are visible and to do so in such
a way that the entire surface of the fin­ished piece is uniformly treated, corners

Initially, this work was done laboriously by
hand by scooping up naturally occurring
small rock particles (sand) and rubbing
them over the surface with animal skins

or cloth. Later, means were found

to adhere the sand to a paper

or cloth backing and what

we today call “sandpaper”
was born. That is where it
started, but far from where
it ended.

What we call “sandpaper”
today rarely is either really
sand in the way we nor­mally think of sand nor is it
necessarily paper. The
abrasive particles can be
anything from natural ma­terials like garnet and
diamonds that have been
carefully processed to be
as even in particle size as
possible to manmade ma­terials like aluminum oxide
or silicone carbide engi­neered with a very high
uniformity in particle size.

The backing material can
be various kinds of paper
derivatives or various
kinds of cloth materials or
manmade screens or

combinations of all three.

There may also be other materials added
to the abrasive surface like soaps and
waxes (called “stearates”) to help prevent
loading of the paper with small particles
of wood fibers and the resins that natu­rally occur in the wood.

To add to the confusion surrounding
“sandpaper,” there are three different
“standards” applied to describing the size
of the abrasive particles. The US grades
are called “CAMI,” the European grades
including the Festool sanding media are
identified as “FEPA” and in Japan the
grades are identified as “JIS.”

The table on the previous page lists how
these different size grades relate one to
another with the actual size of the parti­cles measured in microns. In coarser
grades they are quite close, but as you
move to the finer grades the differences
become greater.

It is not as important to know these differ­ences as it is to recognize how the abrad­ing materials you are using have been
graded. This is important because in or­der to achieve a desired very smooth final
finish you need to progressively “sand”
the finish with finer and finer grits before
you apply the finish and often afterwards
as well. You don’t want to be inadver­tently jumping back and forth between
grading standards or you could be mov­ing from a finer to a coarser grit without
realizing it.

Dust Control With Festool Sand­ers

All Festool sanders feature built-in dust
ports to which a vacuum or dust collector
can be attached. These dust ports lead
to pads which have a series of holes cut
in them. The Festool sandpapers have
matching holes cut in them so the vast
majority of the sanding dust is pulled
through the holes and out through the
dust port into the vacuum or dust collec­tor without spilling out into the open air,
and therefore into the operator’s lungs.

Festool sanders
which use round
abrasives fea­ture a unique
pattern of eight
smaller holes
around the out­side edge of the
pad and paper
plus one larger
hole in the cen­ter of the pad
and paper.

Here is a picture of a typical Festool
round sanding material in the 150mm di­ameter size. The photo shows the back
of the material which has printed on it the
type (which we will discuss in a moment)
and grade (P180 in this case.) All Festool
sanders and supplied sanding media use
a hook-and-loop style of fastening which
means you can remove and reattach the
sanding material repeatedly and quickly.

For the sanders which use the round me­dia, vacuum is drawn through the dust
collector port which is routed to the outer
eight holes. The center hole aligns with

specially designed air inlet ports in the

backing plates. This allows air to be

drawn in through the center hole and
then pulled out to outer holes bringing

with this air stream most of the sanding
particles. As a result Festool sanders are

Note the 9 hole pattern on the
pads on these two Festool
Rotex sanders

very efficient in collecting sanding dust at
the point it is created.

Festool Dust Extractors

Festool supplied dust collectors (they
use the term “extractor”) like the CT 22
model shown below are very efficient
vacuums designed to work as a system

First, the Festool dust collectors come in
several sizes. The smallest is called the
CT Mini while the larger units are called
CT xx where xx refers to the collection
capacity of the internal bag. A CT 22 has

with all of the Festool sanders and cutting
tools. Combined with the 9 hole vent pat­tern in the round pad sanders, and the
variety of hole patterns in the other sand­ers, this potent team keeps the air around
the sanding area much cleaner and safer
for the person operating the sander.

Since human safety is such an important
topic with respect to sanding, let’s take a
few moments to look in more detail at
how the Festool sanders and dust collec­tors work together.

a 22 liter (5.8 gallon) capacity, A CT 33
has a 33 liter (8.7 gallon) capacity and so
on.

The CT Mini pictured above has a 10 liter
(2.6 gallon) capacity and hose/cord stor­age built into the top of the unit. As with
all the other Festool dust collectors, it can

utilize hoses of
different diame­ters for different
tasks. It comes
with a 27mm
(~1”) hose but
larger diameter
hoses can also
be connected if
need be.

Unlike the other
Festool dust
collectors, the

CT Mini opens

by releasing catches on the sides of the
unit and then lifting the whole top assem­bly off of the base section as is shown in
the bottom photo on the previous page.

The bag snaps into the bottom assembly
and a cone shaped section in the upper
assembly engages the bag opening
(which is sealed by a soft lip running all
around the bag opening) when the two
assemblies are brought together.

Air is sucked in through the hose port and
into the bag trapping most of the airborne
particulates. The now largely cleaned air
that passes through the disposable bag is
further scrubbed by replaceable automo­tive type air cleaner elements (shown in
brown in the upper assembly in the bot­tom photo on the previous page) before
being returned to the room.

Suction is 99 CFM with up to 80” of static
water lift so performance is impressive
even for such a small unit.

Inlet air tube

Inlet air tube

CT 22 Dust Extractor

The CT 22 and larger units are different.
First, the top hinges open rather than lift­ing off. The disposable bags fit into a
chamber tightly connecting to the incom­ing air hose tube shown in the photos
above and to the left.

CT 22 Dust Extractor

An “O” ring seals the bag chamber to the
top when the top is closed. As with the
CT Mini, the air coming through the dis­posable bag is quite clean. But unlike the
CT Mini which uses automotive style air
cleaner elements, on the CT 22 and
larger units, before the air is returned to

the room, it passes through dual HEPA

filters shown in white in the photo on the
next page. These remove 99.97% of all
particulate down to 0.3 microns in size
so that the air coming back into the room
where you are operating the sander is

99.99% dust-free.

This is why the de­signed interaction
between the dust
collection built into
each sander and
the dust extraction
system itself is so
important to discuss
before we move on
to the sanders
themselves.

HEPA (High Effi­ciency Particulate
Air) filters were de­veloped by the U.S.
Atomic Energy
Commission to re­move radioactive
dust from industrial
exhaust. These
type filters are now

from the room is used to
cool the motor which is
never in the path of the
incoming dirty air. That
means a longer service
life and little down time.

The green tabs shown
on the inside of the back
wheels in the picture to
the left operate wheel
locks to keep the unit
steady when you want it
fixed in position.

HEPA
Filters

The front wheels are
casters for easy rolling
around.

As the size increases on
the CT 22 and larger
units the motor assem­bly remains the same,

but the lower chamber holding the bag

the primary filtration systems used in the
most sensitive manufacturing and health­care environments.

They are a most welcome addition to my
studio and will be to your studio or shop
as well!

Another important feature of the Festool
dust collectors is the sealed motor cham­ber shown above. Only clean air drawn

CT 33 behind
CT 22 in front

gets taller. A CT 22 is shown in front of a
CT 33 in the photo on the previous page.
Notice how the white lower section is
taller on the CT 33 than on the CT 22.
They draw 134 CFM and pull an impres­sive 90” of static water lift (23000Pa)
while generating only a 72dB noise
level.

I can’t leave the discussion about the
Festool dust collectors without com­menting on the boom arm shown
mounted on the CT 33 on the previ­ous page and to the right. This highly
useful device keeps the vacuum
hose and the power cord up off the
floor and out of your way no matter
which Festool product you might be
using.

When I first heard about the boom
arm I must admit that I thought it was
just one of those ‘nice to have but
certainly not critical’ items. From the
minute I first used one, I changed that
position 180 degrees. It simply alters for
the better how well the already very good
dust collection system works in a shop or

studio setting.

As you can see, bottom left, for years I
kept a Festool dust collector under my
primary sanding station with all the vari­ous Festool sanders close at hand. Yes, I

After the boom arm

was always stumbling over the hose and
the sea of cords shown in the photo be­low but, it was so much better than any­thing I had used before, I guess I just ig-

nored the mess and instead
enjoyed the dramatic improve­ment in productivity brought on
by the tight integration of the
sanders and the dust extrac­tors.

Before the boom arm

However, as soon as the boom
arm mounted on the Festool
DC moved to the far side on
one end of the sanding station,
everything changed for the bet­ter. As the photo above clearly
shows, the sanding station now

is free of the hose/cord clutter
on the floor. The power strip
into which all the sanders

were plugged is gone, replaced by the
one power cord that is right beside
the vacuum hose. All the sanders
are still in the same place and right
at hand, it is just that now the hose
and cord are both up off the floor and
out of my way.

The boom arm mounts easily to the
back of any of the CT 22 or larger
dust collectors. It swivels through a
wide arc so there is good work sur­face coverage. You can mount stabi­lizing out-riggers (supplied) if you
wish but I don’t find them necessary
the way I use the unit. I can’t say
enough good about the boom arm.

I won’t cover here the several other
neat features of the Festool dust collec­tors like the 20 amp power cords, the
self-locking stacking storage for the
boxes the sanders and other Festool
products come in (called “Systainers,”)
but instead will direct you to the Festool
catalog and web site for more details.

on the tool.

Many of the sanders also come with
handy “mini bags” which attach directly to
these ports when you are working in ar­eas not easily reached by the dust collec­tor hose. The photos here show both the

round and the oval port configu-

rations. Notice the “O” ring seal
at the bottom of the port fitting.
A nice touch.

“O” ring seal

All the Festool products with built-in dust
collection have either round or oval ports

Festool vacuum hoses have
soft rubber ends that can easily
mold to either the round or the
oval shape, and the green ver­sions of those hoses are anti­static so they don’t build up dust
on the outside as normal vac­uum hoses do.

Ok, now we know something
about the three different grit siz­ing “standards” (remember Fes­tool supplied grits all use the
European FEPA

standard,) and we have covered the very
important topic of user health via the dust
collection ports built into every Festool
sander working in conjunction with the
HEPA filtered Festool dust collectors, so it
is now time to move to the topic of the
sanding media itself.