Sharing this cautionary tale just to make you think:
Angle grinders were never high on my radar as a DIYer mainly interested in woodwork, but after becoming interested in restoring old machines I found myself using them quite a lot with cutting discs and for surface preparation with wire brushes, flap discs and the norton blaze / vortex discs.
A couple of years ago I traded up from my little 4 1/2" Makita (good, light, but not especially powerful nor smooth) to firstly a Bosch brushless grinder and then added a Metabo 5" machine.
The Bosch is really handy. With a big battery attached it's powerful and it has the advantage of variable speed. Most of my metal cutting jobs can be done in a single charge so it is the one I always reach for first.
If you are stripping back a machine to bare metal, you really need a corded machine and that's why I got the Metabo. It has a rat tail handle at the rear together with a deadman switch and I find this comfortable. 1750W is seriously powerful and it has an automatic vibration reduction feature that really works and is one of the main reasons I bought it.
I like the Metabo but since buying it haven't used it much. A lot of DIY got in the way and I haven't been doing the kind of projects that needed it recently. All the quick jobs are done with with the Bosch and I've only used up 3, maybe 5 cutting discs on the Metabo when I bought it 2+ years ago. That's less than a day's work for a pro tool.
Anyway, I needed to cut some stainless the other day so out came the metabo and though the job started well, after 5 minutes it was losing power and had become much noisier at the back end. I finished the job with the cordless and then opened up the back of the Metabo to investigate.
This is what I found:
Some sections of the commutator were smooth and well defined as they should be on a nearly new tool.
Other sections were badly damaged by excessive arcing
And the edges of the carbon brush (I only pulled one out) also eroded away instead of having a clean edge as normal.
This pattern of damage is consistent with a failure of some of the armature windings so I made a warranty request to Metabo UK who processed it without delay and had the tool back to me very quickly. I've given the grinder a 30 minute workout and it seems to be working OK again.
The BUT in all this is that the tool is 2 1/2 years through it's 3 yr warranty but failed due to a manufacturing defect that would normally show up on the first day's use.
It's OK buying premium tools but if this hadn't happened until it was outside the 3 yr warranty I would have been much more annoyed than if this came from Lidl or Aldi .
The reminder to myself is that if you do treat yourself to a good tool (and Dominos, Lamellos and many even not-so-premium woodworking tools are far more expensive than this) make sure you work it hard early on to flush out any manufacturing problem.
Oh - and always photograph the packaging before you open it. How anyone at Metabo think a couple of inflatable plastic bags will stop 6 lbs of angle grinder rattling around in a box or protect the contents if it gets dropped in transit is beyond me ! I was lucky. And it came back grubby so at least they have tested it after the repair
Angle grinders were never high on my radar as a DIYer mainly interested in woodwork, but after becoming interested in restoring old machines I found myself using them quite a lot with cutting discs and for surface preparation with wire brushes, flap discs and the norton blaze / vortex discs.
A couple of years ago I traded up from my little 4 1/2" Makita (good, light, but not especially powerful nor smooth) to firstly a Bosch brushless grinder and then added a Metabo 5" machine.
The Bosch is really handy. With a big battery attached it's powerful and it has the advantage of variable speed. Most of my metal cutting jobs can be done in a single charge so it is the one I always reach for first.
If you are stripping back a machine to bare metal, you really need a corded machine and that's why I got the Metabo. It has a rat tail handle at the rear together with a deadman switch and I find this comfortable. 1750W is seriously powerful and it has an automatic vibration reduction feature that really works and is one of the main reasons I bought it.
I like the Metabo but since buying it haven't used it much. A lot of DIY got in the way and I haven't been doing the kind of projects that needed it recently. All the quick jobs are done with with the Bosch and I've only used up 3, maybe 5 cutting discs on the Metabo when I bought it 2+ years ago. That's less than a day's work for a pro tool.
Anyway, I needed to cut some stainless the other day so out came the metabo and though the job started well, after 5 minutes it was losing power and had become much noisier at the back end. I finished the job with the cordless and then opened up the back of the Metabo to investigate.
This is what I found:
Some sections of the commutator were smooth and well defined as they should be on a nearly new tool.
Other sections were badly damaged by excessive arcing
And the edges of the carbon brush (I only pulled one out) also eroded away instead of having a clean edge as normal.
This pattern of damage is consistent with a failure of some of the armature windings so I made a warranty request to Metabo UK who processed it without delay and had the tool back to me very quickly. I've given the grinder a 30 minute workout and it seems to be working OK again.
The BUT in all this is that the tool is 2 1/2 years through it's 3 yr warranty but failed due to a manufacturing defect that would normally show up on the first day's use.
It's OK buying premium tools but if this hadn't happened until it was outside the 3 yr warranty I would have been much more annoyed than if this came from Lidl or Aldi .
The reminder to myself is that if you do treat yourself to a good tool (and Dominos, Lamellos and many even not-so-premium woodworking tools are far more expensive than this) make sure you work it hard early on to flush out any manufacturing problem.
Oh - and always photograph the packaging before you open it. How anyone at Metabo think a couple of inflatable plastic bags will stop 6 lbs of angle grinder rattling around in a box or protect the contents if it gets dropped in transit is beyond me ! I was lucky. And it came back grubby so at least they have tested it after the repair
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