Sanders - flatness of pad while orbiting?

[ramkumar_ramaswamy]

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.

[RonB]

No offense, please.

You need to start a challenging woodworking project.

[Matthew]

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

Matthew

[GregP]

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 :-)