Things Your Wood Floor Sanding Equipment Wishes You Would Do

I’m unique because I’m a floor sander who turned into a repair guy—usually people get sent to be trained to repair sanding equipment but they don’t know how to sand a wood floor. The sanding equipment my crew uses on a job site lasts for decades, not because I know how to do extensive repairs, but because we do fundamental maintenance on a daily basis. Here are some things we do that keep our equipment working and making money instead of in my shop.

1) We blow out all our equipment

Most repairs I do on sanding equipment could be prevented with basic maintenance, and blowing machines out is the most fundamental maintenance. No matter which cordless tool manufacturer you use—Milwaukee, DeWalt, Makita, whatever—they all have those little handheld blowers, and that’s the best way to blow dust out of all your machines. Depending on what I’m doing, I’ll blow my equipment out several times while I’m on a job. I know a floor with a rough cut or sticky finish will tend to clog up the machine. I can blow it out even while I’m inside the customer’s house: With the bag on or the vacuum running, turn on the machine and start blowing slowly into the upper roller assembly and into the machine itself. If you start slowly, it won’t make a mess. The less clogged the machine is, the better it will actually pick up the dust as it’s designed to do, which also makes a better sand job.

An upper roller assembly packed with dust.

The inside of a buffer motor full of dust. This and the dusty upper roller assembly could be easily prevented by simply blowing out the machines on a routine basis.

2) Listen to your machine

Many pros today wear hearing protection, which is a good thing! But it does make it harder to hear your equipment, so make a point periodically to listen to what your equipment sounds like. If you hit a nail or go over a hollow board, that’s something you can hear—if you are paying attention. If your machine is making abnormal noise, take it in for service immediately. Sometimes a weird noise will go away in the first few minutes of running the machine, but damage is being done, and you’re shortening the life of your equipment. Many people will just keep running it because they figure they’ve got to get the job done—and they’ll do more damage and have more costly repairs.

3) Let your sanding equipment warm up

Those of us with cold winters need to let the machines warm up before we run them. If your equipment is coming from subzero weather and you try to run it immediately, all the grease that lubricates your bearings will be frozen—so now the bearings start spinning without any lubrication. The machines will also get condensation in the metal parts when they come from extreme cold to a heated job, and moisture in your bearings and the windings of the motor will cause issues. They might not have problems every time, but over time, the moisture will take its toll. Sometimes in the winter you’ll hear screaming or screeching noises—those are frozen belts that are slipping because the rubber is hard. If our equipment is cold when we get to the job, we set it over the heat vents as soon as we get there, then unload the rest of our stuff and talk with the customer. About a half hour is usually enough time for them to warm up.

4) When sparks fly … stop

If you see sparks coming out of the bottom of your big machine, that’s abnormal. That sounds obvious, but you would be amazed at the things I see. Sometimes you’ll think: “How long did they run it like this before they noticed?!” If it’s sparking, the paper isn’t tracking properly. If it’s too far out, it tears up the door, and when it’s too far in, it can cut into the structure of the machine frame. I’ve seen upper roller assemblies cut in half and side doors cut off. If you are running 80- or 100-grit, usually the paper will get destroyed first, but if you have 36 on there, especially with some of the newer minerals on the papers, they will cut right through aluminum and steel. Sometimes it’s as simple as people putting the paper on and forgetting to put the tension on it. Then the paper is running between the drum and the floor with no tension on the upper roller, and the paper will walk all over the place and do a lot of damage. (The people who bring in these machines swear they didn’t do that, but there’s no way for that to happen if the belt tension is on.)

Damage resulting from forgetting to put tension on the belt on the big machine.

5) Empty your vacuum

One time I sold a guy a backpack vacuum with a new motor. He brought it back to me after they did one job with it, and he said it ran for about an hour on a 30,000-square-foot gymnasium and then it just stopped working. I was thinking, “That’s impossible.” I opened it up, and it was packed full of dust like I’ve never seen anything full of dust:

This backpack vac was never emptied while doing an entire gym, and, not surprisingly, the new motor stopped working.

Turns out they were buffing the gym and the finish wasn’t dry, so when they were buffing it, it was clogging up the vacuum, but they never emptied it. The dust suffocated the motor and burned the new motor out. With a vacuum, you gotta empty the d@** thing.

Vacuums create the suction and are exhausted out to keep the fan in the motor cool. If you start restricting the airflow by running it when it’s too full, the motor heats up and creates damage. Another issue is that people will use disposable paper vacuum bags and not realize when there is a tear. Some vacuums have better designs than others, but once you’ve breached that filter, then all the dust being sucked up is going into the brushes of your motor.

Train yourself and your crews to know your vacuums. One of mine has a red light that lights up when it needs to be changed. Some machines aren’t easy to look at and immediately see how full they are, but to check how full any vacuum is, get to know how heavy it feels when it’s due to be changed—then quickly lifting up the machine tells you when it’s time to empty it.

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