On 22 Dec 2004 13:19:00 -0800, wrote:

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.


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 :-)