I have a dewalt grinder, and I am wondering what is the best why to
convert it over to a sander? I have seen grinder conversion kits but it
dose not appear that you can grind a flat surface with one.What do you guys recommend?
Dewalt makes the sander disc attachment to go with their grinder. Then you just get the sandpaper for it, and you're off! Look online, usually amazon.com has what I need, if the local BigBox store doesn't.
Careful, 'tho, you can remove some serious wood with that thing without even trying!
Buy speed control. They are cheap and work great. Mine is called a “router speed control” Grinders usually run to fast for a power pad.
I tried that once. The gearing on the grinder is high speed - low torque. A sander is the opposite.
Smoke and flames and a perfectly good grinder overheated and in the trash.
Don’t try it, it just doesn’t work.
I guess it depends on the model. My hitachi angle grinder came with a sanding attachment, and works fine as a sander. I also use it to cut tile sometimes, with a diamond blade.
I'm a tool junkie, first of all, and I really don't know how many sanders I have any more. Half-sheet sanders, quarter sheet sanders, disc sanders, random orbit sanders, detail sanders...and I finally broke down and got one of thoise little Feins last month.
And a coupla grinders. I like my grinders, as grinders. They are made for turning small speed wheel at high speed to chew stuff out of steel and etc. Not slow turning on fiberglass or (especially) foam. .
But - look, what happens when you use one of those voltage reducers/speed reducers is this. The motor is still trying to do the same work but with less power available. It's not especially good for it.
Your grinder, and I'm not familiar with the exact model you have, is set up to run at around 5-10,000 RPM. To knock that down to 2500 to 5000, you're gonna have to drop the voltage down considerable, so that it'll only spin that fast. I'd say you can do that if you're only doing it rarely, but I have seen a lot of fried tools that ran on voltage that was too low.
Also, that's a good reason to get really good extension cords, prevent voltage drop and fried tools. It amazes me how many people spend top dollar on best quality tools, then cheap out a very few bucks on a 16 gauge extension cord and cook the tools.
Okay, besides that, you're talking about a 4 1/2-5 inch disc here. It's not something for polishing/sanding large areas. You can't find 5" soft backing discs easily either, so feathering with the thing is prolly out.
Bummer, huh? Well, be happier - instead of spending $20-30 on a speed reducer gizmo, spend $50 and get a real sander-polisher: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=92623
Or, look in your friendly neighborhood used tool store for a good used disc sander, like http://www.milwaukeetool.com/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductId=6078&CategoryName=SC%3a++7+and+9+in.+Sanders which is as good as it gets ( I have and like mine) or the now discontinued Porter Cable disc sanders, which were pretty good. What with how construction is going these days, you can pick up some bargains. No used tool store locally? Ask at the local tool repair place for stuff that was never picked up - they have 'em.
hope that's of use
doc...