I recently purchased a Festool RO 90 DX from Bob Marino. It was a pleasure to do business with him, the tool arrived along with all the abrasives I'd ordered and some spare bags for my CT33 vacuum, in 2 business days. I'd definitely buy from him again.
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I'm in the process of painting a house, and have to sand a lot of facia and soffit where the paint is peeling off, after scraping. I thought it would be a perfect job for my Festool Rotex 150, which is super aggressive, but it turned out the space under the eaves up inside the soffit was too tight for the big Rotex. I couldn't turn it around inside there. Also, the tight corners which were hard to scrape paint from could not be attacked with the round large tool-head.
So, I bought the new RO90. Slight gloat here, as I do think it's "Gloatable" to actually find a hard-core must-do project that necessitates a tool purchase, and if you can actually say that the ONLY possible tool that could do the job is a Festool? Well, THAT is just the excuse we're all looking for right? And in this case, after posting here for advice on how to strip that paint, and hours of research, I do believe that only the RO90 could do the job. It turns out that indeed the new RO 90 DX is the only highly aggressive sander with an acute angle head to fit into right angle corners, AND able to take on an entire house sanding project, AND be able to sustain multiple drops from a roof...
I spent about 8 hours today standing on various ladders using the RO 90. I'm very pleased with it! The handle with it's two sides is fantastic to use--I can't over-state how helpful that was all day, being able to hold the sander in 4 or 5 different positions to get all 4 sides up underneath a roof-eave, while precariously perched on a ladder 20 feet up, without having to change my body position. I was able to just rotate the sander one-handed and modify my grip, with complete control of the tool. I've used several deWalt palm sanders before for similar jobs, and this was vastly better. The weight of the unit was acceptable, and made more so again by the good ergonomics of the handle.
Additionally, the highly aggressive and powerful motion was fantastic--I was able to strip off paint and chips quickly, and smooth down scraping gouges. I used P40 grit Saphir triangular paper on the triangular head that comes stock, it was great.
Unfortunately, I did drop the thing off a roof, about a 10 foot drop, and it landed on a concrete sidewalk below. I had laid it down on the roof tiles, and was on my back on the roof up under a sub-roof, scraping way back in a corner. I got some paint chips in my eye and threw my arm out, hit the sander, and it slid down the tiles and off. I could hear it smack the concrete and thought " DOH! THAT didn't last long!" quickly retrieved it, not a mark on it and it ran perfectly!
All in all, I'm very pleased with the tool. The physical labor and pain and hard logistics of sanding wooden sun-damaged soffit while standing on a ladder mandate that you want to use only the very best equipment that will get the job done without overly straining your arms, or having to go up and down ladders, or flailing around trying to put pressure on the sander and getting unbalanced. The Festool RO 90 performed well, and was money well spent, especially considering I have a couple more days ahead of me using it on this project. I always wondered how Festool could charge so much for their products, and now having used this one in pretty torturous non-foofoo real world labor, I have no more questions. I would absolutely buy it again and recommend it.
By the way, in 8 hours of agressive sanding of paint and banging the abrasive around in corners without any care at all towards preserving the paper... I only used two sheets of the P40 Saphir paper! And the 2nd sheet is in good condition still, just brushed off some paint embedded on it and it's good go go for another couple hours I'd say. Frankly I'm amazed at this, my experience with my DeWalt palm sanders and HD papers is that the abrasive only lasts for 5-10 minutes at most with heavy use. That saphir is amazing.
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