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Orbital DA sander sticky pad conversion

Im4yotas

@LuckyCloverRacing
Joined
Feb 25, 2021
Member Number
3549
Messages
219
Loc
SoCal
Nothing mind blowing here, just pleasantly surprised with the results. I got a cheap little 5" DA sander back when I was dabbling in wood working. It used hook and loop sand paper. Worked pretty well for the 3 or 4 projects I did.
I have a couple of 6" pneumatic DA sanders that use the sticky back PSA disc's and I use these for metal working. I have been doing a lot of work late at night or early in the morning fab work in the garage, so running the air compressor has been out of the question. So I started using the little 5" electric DA with decent results.
But the hook and loop wore out completely. Some looks melted. :confused:

I didn't really like the hook and loop, and prefer the bigger 6" disc's, of which I have a good stock pile, so I decided to try to convert it from 5" hook and loop to 6" sticky back. I picked up a 6" backing pad with a 5/16-24 stud for like 12 bucks.

3/4" aluminum plate for the adapter. 2-3/8" hole saw made a perfect round cutout. Drilled and tapped the center for the stud with a large clearance on the back for the Allen bolt and washer. Then transfer punched the 4 bolt pattern from the old pad onto the adapter, and drilled and counter-bored those. I was worried that the extra rotating mass or bigger OD would through off the DA randomness, but it seems to work great so far!

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We just bought 2 porter cable right angle 6 inch random orbit sanders at work, they are big heavy sobs and IIRC 4.7 amps. They use a heavy weight for counterbalance just like a real pneumatic DA sander. They came with sticky pads but I replaced them with H&L . They are heavy but they are 4x the tool than the inline ones like the OP has pictured, with wood you have to go to a finer paper and be careful or you can take a veneer right off.

OP you could have replaced your H&L with a 5 inch sticky pad with the same mounting pattern, they are available all over the net and yours was probably sold either way.
 
A little update on this - the extra weight of the adapter on the off center rotating section really increased the vibration. Not like it was going to rattle the thing apart, but it would make my hand sore after a few minutes of use. I decided to add some lightness to the adapter. Seems to have helped a lot.
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Got a little thinner than I would have liked in a few spots, but seems to work so far.
 
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