Flex shaft tool: any hints?

[Bill Tokyo]

I just bought a flex shaft tool. I have a book on flex shafts published by ganoksin, but it seems fairly basic.

Any tricks, tips or ideas of any sort would be appreciated. I'm mainly planning to use if for fine buffing
and metal finishing, particularly watch cases.

There's so many people on this forum with great ideas that I hope you will throw a few my way.

Bill

PS Flex shaft tools are brand new to Japan where I live, and they haven't caught on yet, as people are still
just getting used to Dremels and small hand motors, which are still pretty new to this market.

 

[Peter E]

Bill,
One thing I have learned over the years is a tendancy to use too much speed. You didn't say what types of things you will be using it for, but I found when sanding and grinding I get better results by using very slow speeds. I have a Dremel tool and found that for many things I use a Flexible shaft for, the Dremel is not effective because the slowest speed is about 5.000 rpm.

Peter

 

[jimzim75]

Hi Bill,
If you could use a small sanding cylinder. You can either use a old broke off bur that you have taken
the temper out or a nail. Saw it down the middle and slide in a small piece of sanding paper.
You can let it flap or use a rubber band from dental braces or a little tape.

Low speeds are good for sanding, but high speed works for small burs around 1mm with a light touch.
Use a lube, like bur life or a cutting oil like tap magic. This will make your burs last longer.
Using to the tool you will find out what works for you.

 

[Bill Tokyo]

Thanks for the tips

It's true--one thing I really disliked about the Dremel was that it was too fast, and I never thought
that I needed that much speed for micro buffing, which is what I mainly intend to use it for.

Thanks very much for the tip on how to make a miniature sanding drum. I thought of making them out of
small dowels and gluing the sand paper on, but your method sounds much better