I've been eyeing a Mirka Ceros for a long time. I finally picked one up last week, and I thought I would post a review. The review ends with the fact that I no longer have the Mirka Ceros. (Not a good thing.)
I've used many different sanders over the years. I've owned just about every brand out there, and still have many of them. Four or five years ago, I bought a Dynabrade Silver Supreme 5" orbital sander, and it has been a great replacement for my heavy and noisy electric sanders. The Mirka Ceros seemed like the best of all worlds. It is as small and light as my Dynabrade, but I don't have to listen to a noisy compressor. Last week, my aging compressor started giving me some grief, so I took the plunge on the Mirka.
For the first half an hour, it seemed to be everything I wanted. It wasn't quite as smooth as the Dynabrade, but it was close enough. It produced a great finish. It didn't have a noisy compressor. It was small and light. Everything I wanted.
And then it broke. And then it broke some more.
First, the moving parts came free from the housing. I took some pictures. I removed the sanding pad to show how the innards easily slid in and out, which it's not supposed to do.
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I tried sanding a little while more, and the innards somehow re-seated themselves inside the housing, and it held together fine for a while. Every ten or fifteen minutes, things would come loose again, and then they would go back in and seat. I'm not sure what caused it.
Second, the sander periodically had an electrical problem. Sometimes, when I released the paddle, the sander would continue spinning, like it was stuck in the "on" position. I had to unplug it to get it to stop. Other times, it wouldn't start spinning in the first place, and the red light would come on and blink.
I managed to get 2-3 hours worth of use out of the sander over the five or six days that I had it, and every time, my job was interrupted by these mechanical and electrical problems. Each day, I had to finish my sanding with the Dynbabrade because the Mirka stopped working. Typically, when I came back to the shop the next day and started working again, the Mirka fired up and worked for a while before giving out. However, a couple days ago, the electrical side of it stopped working altogether. I couldn't get it to start, no matter how many times I turned it on and off, no matter how many times I reset the transformer. I couldn't get it going again. Just the red light.
I have no reason to doubt that Mirka stands behind its products, and that they would have repaired or replaced the unit if I had gone through the warranty process. However, I didn't spend $535 on a sander so that the manufacturer could stand behind it when it broke within the first hour or two's worth of use. For that much money, I expect a bulletproof sander. For a $535 sander to have this level of mechanical and electrical problems out of the box is not OK. So, I returned it.
I have instead realized that the Dynabrade is, without a doubt, the ultimate sander. There simply is no electrical substitute. Even when the Mirka was working at its best, it was not as smooth as the Dynabrade. So, rather than continuing to invest in electric sanders with high price tags and lots of parts that can (and eventually will) fail, I ordered a new Quincy compressor. The Quincy and the Dynabrade should both last a lifetime.