CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Festool Connect 2017 - New Tools From Festool, SawStop & Shaper Tools

homefixated.com: Festool just held Festool Connect 2017, so I traveled to the company’s U.S. headquarters in Lebanon, Indiana just outside Indianapolis to see what it’s all about. The Festool Connect event is mainly set up as a customer appreciation day for both die-hard Festoolies and those curious to learn more about the brand, but there was a decent representation of media folks brought in too.

3 comments:

Daniel S said...

I’m not sure that there’s a lot to get excited about in this article. The most exciting thing might be that Festool and SawStop are now owned by the same parent company. This might mean the safety we have come to expect in SawStop with the quality and precision we’ve come to expect from Festool. The other groundbreaking idea is the corded/cordless sander. I’d like to see more of this technology. Although, around here it wouldn’t do any good because we’d lose the cords for turning the cordless tools into corded ones. If Festool had more tools like this – I’d probably look into buying them for myself. Given how often the guard is out of the table saw (which should be almost never), I think we should look into buying the new overarm dust collector with the over the blade guard. I’ll also talk to Ben about getting one of these.

Kimberly McSweeney said...

Festool is really making their way through the ranks here by partnering with SawStop and beginning to adapt their technologies to be more common-folk friendly. I really like all of Festool’s products that I have tried, and their overall aesthetic and ergonomic value is amazing. I am super curious and very much want to try these scalloping and gouging planer attachments because I have never seen anything like that before and honestly from the pictures it looks amazing. The other thing that was cool about this article is the line of drywall tooling Festool produces, I had no idea Festool was marketed towards professional drywall companies. Their added inspection light to their standard drywall sander is an excellent idea and definitely something I would want while doing drywall work. I also have never seen a battery-operated Festool product and am now curious as to how well they perform in comparison to Makitas and DeWalts.

Drew H said...

There is a lot to love in this article. But the one thing that stood out the most is the cordless sander. The whole point of Festool in my opinion is their dust collection and if your sander has a battery why hook it up to a dust collector. That defeats the whole purpose of cordless. I also love that they are starting to fabricate in the US, maybe that means they will have imperial measurements on their tools. And that new saw stop overarm connection? That thing is beefy. I would love to have that in our shop since our arm doesn’t like to stay where it is supposed to. Also with the Biesemeyer-sequel guard removal system, it is easier to put the blade guard back when someone removes it. All in all, this little event seems like the ideal place for me to spend an afternoon. There is a lot of cool things happening that might not be cool enough for this article, but that are still things we have never thought of or seen before.