| Drum Sanders vs. Wide Belt Sanders |
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Most people prefer the wide belt sander as it does a better job and in lesser time. Since the drum sander may leave ripples you would have to finish sanding with a random orbit sander. So you actually end up handling panels twice. Whereas, with wide belts you have faster belt changes and more powerful motor.
The biggest advantage with wide belts is changing grits. You can change a belt from 80 to 120 or 150 in around 30 seconds and change back to a 36g if you need to in the same amount of time. Whereas it takes about 15 minutes to change the paper on the drum sander it is also true that they do run very slow. The platen is another huge advantage.
All the reviews seem to suggest wide belt sanders to be better. Looks like a drum sander is what you buy when you can’t afford a wide belt, and you end up spending more time changing the paper on it than sanding. A drum has a small contact point similar to a planer hence the ripples. A wide belt with the platen has a contact point of 1" to 2" and the sandpaper oscillates back and forth which minimizes lines from the sandpaper grit thus giving a surface that allows one to go right to finishing. Regardless of size, all belt sanders operate on the same principle: a sandpaper belt wraps around a rear roller and a front roller. The drive roller connected to the motor spins, causing the sanding belt to move forward like the tread of a bulldozer.
The decision between drum sanders and wide belt sanders is difficult. A wide belt is a lot more money, but you also get a lot more machine. Whereas drum sanders are for relatively accurate finer passes but are very slow. If you want speed then the wide belt is the thing for you. You could try to negotiate a better price to replace the drum sander with a wide belt.
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Drum Sander Manufacturers |
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