Hi everybody,
here’s my take on these things.
As far as I know, there is no connection between Festool and Dewalt/Elu/Black & Decker.
Elu was the brand name under which the German company EUGEN LUTZ sold hand-held/mobile power tools for woodworkers. In particular, Elu was highly regarded for their routers, planers, SMCS and TGS saws. In addition to the hand-held tools EUGEN LUTZ also produced stationary machinery – mainly for (industrial) window production applications, if I recall correctly. Some day, unfortunately, I don’t know when, EUGEN LUTZ sold the ELU line of hand-held power tools to Black & Decker. At this time, Black & Decker tried to get a foothold in the European market for professional power tools, thus the reputable name ELU was welcome.
Today, Eugen Lutz still offers stationary machinery, just have a look at Elumatec.
Black & Decker enlarged ELU’s product range and continued to sell ELU in Europe (or at least some European states) until 2000. In most countries outside Europe Black & Decker offered ELU tools in yellow colours under the label of Dewalt (another company that Black & Decker had bought). As already mentioned, since 2000 ELU tools are no longer offered, as a consequence we also get Dewalt here in Europe. I guess it was part of Black & Decker’s strategy to establish a certain kind of uniformity and to reduce cost that they stop to sell ELU.
Today, Metabo builds a few tools (some sanders) for Dewalt, while Dewalt is said to manufacture the larger rotary hammer drills for Metabo. I don’t know if the information about sanders is true for Dewalt’s US product range, but it applies at least to some tools offered here:
Compare Dewalt D26430, D26420, D26410 to Metabo DSE 300, SR E 357, SX E 450 Duo.
As Bob already explained, Mafell manufactured the OF 2000 for Festool and Mafell got their small router LO 50 from Festool.
To my knowledge, the cooperation in the case of the big routers (Festool OF 2000/Mafell LO 65) will expire in the near future, I don’t know about the smaller routers. Mafell is likely to introduce a successor of the LO 65 this year and according to rumours the successor of the Festool OF 2000 (this time developed and manufactured by Festool) could be expected next spring.
BTW, I tend to remember that the Mafell ROS UT 150 E comes from Metabo, the Mafell ROS UX 150 E from Kress (as well as the Mafell hammer drill HSB and the biscuit joiner LNF 20 – or at least certain components of it). As many other companies (Bosch, Milwaukee, Metabo, Hitachi), Mafell gets their vacs from Starmix.
Now to the Festool belt sanders:
As far as I know, but I'm not absolutely sure, the original manufacturer of the Festool belt sanders was Holz-Her. Holz-Her still exists as a producer of industrial woodworking machines (such as vertical panel saws, edgebanders etc.). If I recall correctly, Festool/TTS bought Holz-Her's hand-held power tools division back in 2000.
Today, a variety of former Holz-Her power tools is sold by Festool (e. g., belt sanders, Symmetric saw) and Protool (one of Festool's sister companies).
In Europe, the Holz-Her/Festool belt sander (75 mm/3” belt width) is also available from Metabo and Milwaukee (now owned by TTI, formerly by Atlas Copco). The bigger belt sanders (105 mm/4” band width) originally developed by Holz-Her are sold exclusively by Festool today.
Well, if you investigate carefully and discover a few more secrets, please, let me know.
Hope this helps,
Christian
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Originally Posted by Christian Aufreiter
