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.