www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk

At the car boot yesterday I saw a MacAllister 10.8v sander, the mouse style ones. It was brand new in box being sold because the blokes wife had bought it for him in a sale but he didn't have the right kind of battery for it. Now I don't have the right type of battery either but I thought I might be able to modify it to work with my draper batteries. £2.50 including a load of sanding sheets so I thought it was worth a punt and would be a bit of a fun challenge if nothing else.

Well first thing I did was let the smoke out! Blew a couple of diodes when I did a test connection with my battery. Either the Mac batteries have some kind of funny wiring or there was a fault in there, or me of course. Not to worry, the circuit board only complicated matters and was only there to run a couple of little LED's so wasn't going to be much help. Cut it all out and wired into the switch direct since the motor is 12v anyway and worked fine when connected directly to my battery.
Probably spent about 2 hours tinkering around, shifting the pins and making a very slight mod to the internal battery compartment.
Happy to state though that it now works like a champ, my batteries fit snugly inside and don't rattle loose, the switch works fine and the sander runs smoothly. I think it will be really good with my fine grades of paper for little touch ups and also be helpful doing odd corners that my big 6" ROS can't get to.
Can't really count the labour since I had fun doing it and for the cost of a pint it was worth it for entertainment value alone.

Well done R, I love to see it when someone spends hours saving a bit of kit like that. It does not matter how long you spend, it is the fact that you have used skill and ingenuity to make it work again.

Well done

DWD

yes well done i spend many an afternoon doing pointless conversions and adaptions with many never getting fully used if at all
its just as said for a challenge and the satisfaction
but having said that the' it will off course work without the circuit board but functions that could be included like overload protection /voltage regulation/radio and tv interference suppression

big-all wrote:yes well done i spend many an afternoon doing pointless conversions and adaptions with many never getting fully used if at all
its just as said for a challenge and the satisfaction
but having said that the' it will off course work without the circuit board but functions that could be included like overload protection /voltage regulation/radio and tv interference suppression

Best I could tell from the circuit it has a voltage dropper for the LED worklight and a a battery power indicator. These came in parallel off the main power circuit which looks to go straight to the motor via the switch. Of course it could be more complicated than that but I am willing to take that risk.

The motor inside was your standard 12v affair that I would expect to see in a drill/multitool with a toothed belt drive to the off balance pulley. Nicely made little affair with a good quality continental brand belt, aluminium/magnesium parts and sealed bearings. Of course plenty of plastic parts too. Generic 6A toggle switch under the moulded buttons, probably worth the money I paid on it's own if you had to order a single one online.

When running it sounds and feels just like the old B&D mouse I used to use and seems to do it's job well. Will work nice with some homemade abranet sheets I think, though I doubt I will be using the dust extraction on it as the hole is so small I reckon I might overload my vacuum lol.

During my googling for information I also found that MacAllister made a cordless multitool in the same range. Scored a NOS on ebay for just over a tenner so fingers crossed for another successful conversion.

dewaltdisney wrote:Well done R, I love to see it when someone spends hours saving a bit of kit like that. It does not matter how long you spend, it is the fact that you have used skill and ingenuity to make it work again.

Well done

DWD

“Life is a journey, not a destination.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ok multi tool conversion was also a success, same process, cut out the circuit board and re-wire, moving the pins to suit. It runs smooth and quiet (well for a multi tool lol). Only problem I do have is that the vibration when making a cut can wiggle the battery out, so I am going to add either a strap or clip to help secure the battery, otherwise I am very happy.

Update on the sander, used in anger for the first time today by my partner, perfect for her little hands. It removed material fast with a good pad on it, comfortable to use and not too noisy. I started with a fully charged battery, she used it for a good 15-20 minutes sanding a box and when I checked the battery in my drill it was still showing 2 out of 3 bars for battery level. I had expected it to be a real battery drain since unlike a drill it is running constantly but it seems it's not too bad. It will be interesting to see how the multi tool is for battery drain, I am suspecting it will be hard on them since it will be bogged down more.

sanders tend to be about 25% the motor size off a drill even less for a mouse size
a mains drill would be perhaps 600w and a sander about 125-175 for a sander
but as you say up to 40-50 mins possible run time is quite impressive

big-all wrote:sanders tend to be about 25% the motor size off a drill even less for a mouse size
a mains drill would be perhaps 600w and a sander about 125-175 for a sander
but as you say up to 40-50 mins possible run time is quite impressive

I was impressed. I think from my 1.5ah battery I could get a comfortable 30mins before I would think about switching batteries. Where possible I try not to run them right down since it's bad for Li-ion, on my drills I charge them as soon as I notice them hitting the 1 bar level.