Hi -
I work in a cabinet shop, own a sandflee, and demo it at some of the wood shows. This makes me biased and you should know that going it. I largely aggree with Jim Brown’s assessment – that the unit is not a thickness sander and it is not for removing large quantities of stock. If your application is thickness planing I would recommend the General double drum sander as a great tool. I don’t like the Performax because we consistently have setup and use problems with it. If you are finish sanding parts or assembled units the Sand-Flee is the best choice because of versatility and ease of use.
The Sand-Flee is a finishing drum sander. It is made in the USA from US parts and the motor is a Baldor 1/3 horse motor. The machine carries a lifetime guarentee – we’ll fix it for you if it breaks. The motor has a 2 year warrenty from Baldor. The top is 11 guage stainless.
In the cabinet shop we have the Sand-Flee, a Performax drum sander, and a General double drum sander. For us a 10-cabinet run is large. We build mostly entertainment centers, kitchen remodel and small tables on a 1-off basis.
The Performax sander is the least used. It is a thickness sander with a power feed. Like a planer, the sanding is done on the top and the feed is from the bottom. We have largely stopped using the unit because keeping the overhead arm in proper adjustment is a lot of work. It costs between $5 and $8 per wrap for the paper and you have to wrap the whole drum with the same grit. The paper has a mechanical restraint and can be hard to load. We have also had problems with burning cherry. The Performax also puts dust everywhere even when connected to dust collection.
The General double drum sander is a thickness sander. Like the Performax it sands from the top and the power feed works from the bottom. This is a much better sander for thicknessing. Because the feed is a rubber belt there is some give and on narrow work you can get out of square. Dust collection is good and the feed rate is good. This is a much more expensive machine than either of the others. The shortest part you can put through is 6” and I don’t like to go shorter than 8-10. The mechanical paper restraint is easier to use. You do need to load two drums to use the machine effectively and you are limited to one grit per drum. It will remove lots of stock quickly with an 80 or 100 grit on the first roller.
The Sand-Flee is a different type of machine. The drum is under the table, and you take off about 1/64th per pass because you are limited by the grit you mount. Pressing down on the stock does not increase the amout of wood removed. The paper uses Velcro—so it is available from multiple suppliers and you can mount multiple grits at the same time. There is no height or shape limitation so you can sand all 6 sides of a board—with a fence you effectively edge joint the four sides and sand the front a back. This can be useful for finish sanding boxes or final sanding of doors and lids. Although I don’t scroll saw, several customers use it to sand their work so it manages thin and/or fragile work. It costs about $1.50 to wrap the 18” drum regardless of grit. The paper is easy to load. We use the machine a lot in the shop.
Hope this didn’t sound too much like a commercial, but I like the machine.
