Sanders are often used on softer materials like wood; however, you can also sand concrete surfaces or sharpen knives with a sander. This is a high-level comparison of sanding and grinding with a focus on hand-held and DIY tools like angle or belt grinders and belt, disk and orbital sanders.
We will be discussing the details in the following sections. A grinder is a power tool that is used for grinding obviously , cutting, sanding , brushing and other DIY areas. Grinders come in different sizes and forms with application areas ranging from DIY to industrial use. For DIYers and semi-professional users, these are the two most common types:. An angle grinder is a tool with a geared head on the side on which you can mount abrasive or cutting discs but also brushes and other attachments.
Angle grinders are rather inexpensive and offer good value if you take their versatility into account. Check prices of angle grinders on Amazon. These grinders are often used as stationary rather than hand-held tools. They have an abrasive belt and some offer the option of attaching a contact wheel. Belt grinders are semi- professional machines and will set you back at least a few hundred dollars.
Check prices of belt grinders on Amazon. Sanders are used to sand, smooth and polish surfaces. As the name implies, these tools are using sandpaper as an abrasive.
These sanders have a sandpaper belt and they are mostly used for rough or smooth sanding of large surfaces, e. Belt sanders come either as stationary or as hand-held tools, depending on their area of application. Read more in our review of belt sanders. Check prices of belt sanders on Amazon. A disk sander is usually a stationary machine.
For these types of sanders, the sandpaper comes in the form of a disk instead of a belt. Check prices of disk sanders on Amazon. This power tool has a round pad and performs the sanding in circles, thus achieving smoother results compared to a belt sander. While an orbital sander creates a circular movement of the sandpaper, a random orbital sander adds an additional back-and-forth movement.
Read more in our review of random orbital sanders and learn the difference between orbital and palm sanders. Check prices of orbital and random orbital sanders on Amazon.
More robust and specialized sanders also allow you to work with:. You can also adjust the belt of belt grinders or buy additional equipment like brushes, metal cut off wheels or discs for sanding.
With the latter, you can use your grinder as a sander while, on the other hand, you would not be able to use a sander for cutting metal, for instance.
Most sanders are not as powerful as grinders. In the past, sanders used to run at a fixed speed and did not offer many upgrading options but this has changed in recent years and nowadays you will also find variable-speed sanders and various attachments in the market. As you can see, the difference between sanders and grinders are small. Belt grinders tend to be more common in the form of a stationary machine for semi- professional use, particularly for processing hard materials, e.
Especially if you live down south or on the west coast. Because whatever the current job is maybe hot and your customer may need it quickly.
So keeping spare parts on the shelf is recommend. So order today to keep a set of spare parts on the shelf so you can get your machine back up and running so you can quickly get you current job done. Click here to be redirected to the Kalamazoo Industries online store. In the mean time contact us with your sanding and or grinding applications so we can assist you in determine whether you need a large or small industrial belt sander and or large and or small industrial belt grinder.
Also you can check out our heavy duty belt sander web page by clicking here and our heavy duty belt grinder page by clicking here. Previous Next.
Contact us for pricing and or application questions. We can be reached at Subscribe to the Kalamazoo Industries youtube channel and click the notification bell to be alerted when we upload new videos. Difference between belt grinder and belt sander.
What to look for in a high quality grinder….. Type of motor being used? Is it totally enclosed fan cooled? As such, you will not only want to use gloves but also safety glasses when using an angle grinder.
As for power sanders, they are relatively safe to use. However, they generate a lot of dust. Because of that, you will want to wear a mask when sanding to protect yourself from inhaling paint or wood particles. Considering that they are, for a large part, very different tools, it is impossible to generalize which of the two is better.
Instead, it is necessary to look at the task you need to get done and then decide which of the tools better suits it. As mentioned earlier, some tasks — especially removing old paint from metal surfaces — can be done using both an angle grinder and a sander. In that case, the better tool for the job will depend on whether you are looking to get the job done as quickly as possible angle grinder or as nicely and cleanly as possible sander. Both angle grinders and power sanders are very useful tools to have in your workshop.
However, they both serve fairly different purposes. While the former is mostly used when working with metal, the latter is best suited for working with wood. Because of that, eventually, you will want to have both an angle grinder and at least one sander in your kit. If you are looking to get only one of them, though, then you will need to consider the type of work you will mostly be doing. When deciding, you should also keep in mind that while sanding can be done manually as well, a lot of the work people do with angle grinders would be fairly difficult to do without a power tool.
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