Well, its Friday afternoon and the promised Foredom 25 never arrived. I
guess its time to disassemble the 44Ts and see if I can crank down their
tolerance and make them into something useful. I would have done that a
week ago if Foredom had not offered to send out a 25 to try.



"Bob La Londe" wrote in message
...
I recently commented about how impressed I was with the hand pieces that
came with the Harbor Freight flex shaft motors. No noticeable side play
by chucking up a cutter and pushing it side to side.

Hoping to step up a notch I bought a couple Foredom 44T hand pieces. I
was disappointed. The definitely have side play by the same test. I
contacted Foredom and complained. Their explanation was that the 44T and
43T hand pieces are intended to be used as a hand held tool, and if they
crank them down to get side play down in the .0015 range (which would be
acceptable for what I want to use them for) they would generate way to
much heat to be comfortable to hold. That actually makes sense and its
one of the complaints I read in the reviews of the Harbor Freight hand
piece. It gets too hot to hold when run at max speed for very long.

Kevin at Foredom is sending me a 25 hand piece to evaluate at no cost. If
I like it I just send him my 44Ts and when I am ready, buy another 25.
The price step is quite a bit though. The 44T can be had for about $50,
while the best price I have seen on the 25 is $135. The 25 is listed as a
"continuous production" hand piece.

The heat of the HF hand piece was not that big of a deal for me since I
was using them in aluminum mounting clamps made out of 1/2 bar stock. I
didn't feel the heat, and the aluminum clamps helped to bleed off some of
the heat they generated.

My over all opinion of Foredom customer service however is very high. I
did not expect such a fantastic response from them. I will abuse the 25
as soon as it arrives and see how it performs, and if I am happy with it I
will buy another one. The 25 is a little larger diameter than the HF or
the 44T so I either need to bore out my clamps or make new ones. I think
I'll make some new ones because building the "prototypes" for the HF hand
pieces and using them to make some parts showed me some flaws in my
design. I need a squaring brace/block directly between the two clamps if
I want them to easily be able to mount on the machine and maintain
relative position accurately.