My $20 roto tool find

Nice find! I've found quite a few cheap useful stuff at Harbor Freight as well for home and modelling. I may buy a dual action airbrush from Harbor Freight for the heck of it until I can afford a decent quality brand. Unless I cansee if I could get some kind of discount on one at my LHS I frequent at that's been sitting on his shelf for years.

These are great to have in your tool stash. I have a very similar one I bought at Walmart several years ago in their after Christmas sale. Mine is silver instead of black and came in a little metal suitcase with attachments. Its pretty much sold as a Dremel like tool but it would definitelt NOT hold up for much more than modeling. In my opinion its still a great investment.

I bought one of those clones at a Menards for around twenty bucks a couple of years ago. It lasted about one second.  When I hit the power switch there was a blue flash and popping sound, and it tripped a breaker.  Menards cheerfully refunded my money.  Forget the brand.

Don I've used it already and seemed to have more luck. I have a Dremmel but the rpm's are incredible and it snaps those micro bits in a second. I use it for other things, but so far this is doing what I wanted it to???? So far the bits are holding up too????

Terry

I too noticed the high speed (on the lowest setting) of my Dremel too. Wish it could run a bit slower.

if it is single speed, on/off, you might try rigging up a plug with a variable speed controller rheostat...a dimmer switch. Then you can slow it to a crawl. Or so I'm told. I have HF type that is a vairiable speed. it will dial down quite a but.

itsa variable but the slowest can still melt styrene

I just don't understand why Dremel doesn't sell one of their tools with lower RPM's. I know at one time they sold a rheostat like device that you plugged the power into. Don't know what it would slow down to but I do know these are hard to find and very expensive.

The minimum speed on my battery dremel is super-slow. I have both the battery and ac versions. Yeah, the ac version is problematic for slow speeds but the battery version has excellent speed control. I only use the AC for stuff like hogging out big cavities in wood or something like that.

I have a Dremel w/ a rechargeable battery. Its minimum speed is super slow.

I've had a couple of those small grinders from Harbor Freight with only a little better luck than Don.  After about 6 months, you turn on the switch and that lets all the smoke out of them and they don't want to work after that.  Cured the problem a couple of years ago.  Was doing an Annual Inspection on an Ercoupe and its owner was cleaning out his hanger.   Came by the plane with a box of electrical odds and ends and asks me if there was anything in the box that I might be interested in cause it all was headed to the trash.  Took a look and lo and behold there was a like new foot operated switch with Dremel stamped on the rocker arm.  Seems it belonged to his mother and she never used it.  Works great and the price was right!

What model Dremel are you guys using?

My AC dremel is the model 395, my battery one is the 780 Multipro.

Thanks for the info Don.

Unfortunately Dremel no longer makes this model. Even worse nothing comparable. They do have cordless models but the only ones with variable speeds are way to big and have bad reviews.

They have corded variable speeds but I want cordless.

Oh well, ya snooze ya lose.