Setec Astronomy
Well-known member
I have been advocating for years that Flex come out with a smaller (3"?) version of the 3401, or in today's world, the XCE? Is that the cordless version of the 3401?
One of my stipulations has been that it should have a form factor like a rotary or the polishers mentioned above, with a variable-speed trigger. I have not really been interested in the PXE-80 because it seemed to be trying to do too many things at once, and it's expensive, and...it doesn't have a trigger. I did think about the similar Griot's BOSS Hybrid Micro Polisher, which does have a trigger, but I decided instead to see what happened in the longer term.
We have had a few interesting entries lately in the small polisher world, starting with the Rupes HLR75, Shinemate and similar, and Bosch just came out with a range, but those are a different form factor (not saying that's bad).
Back in the spring at TRCMA, the Flex rep was talking about the new, more compact 24V batteries, and hinted that the very small size could be used for something else, and that SEMA would be when we would find that out.
Well, it looks like this is it: https://www.flex-tools.com/en/new-era
That said, I don't think that's the exact tool that we will be seeing here, as we will get the 24V version (unless we get the 18V also). I'm not sure what to make of this tool, like the "PiXiE", it's trying to do an awful lot (including a built-in light), but it does have a forced-rotation mode, which makes it unique in this segment. The form factor is....different, but it does have a trigger. I'm sure it will be very expensive.
That guy Josh who does a lot of videos on YouTube is how I found out about it, and from the comments it sounded like this unit has been making the rounds for Beta testing under NDA, the most interesting comment I saw was that the US distribution would be unique to Sonax...which on the face of it makes no sense to me, it's hard to believe that would be right, but if it is, could mean that the only place to get it would be Autogeek, since the Autopia store is defunct.
One of my stipulations has been that it should have a form factor like a rotary or the polishers mentioned above, with a variable-speed trigger. I have not really been interested in the PXE-80 because it seemed to be trying to do too many things at once, and it's expensive, and...it doesn't have a trigger. I did think about the similar Griot's BOSS Hybrid Micro Polisher, which does have a trigger, but I decided instead to see what happened in the longer term.
We have had a few interesting entries lately in the small polisher world, starting with the Rupes HLR75, Shinemate and similar, and Bosch just came out with a range, but those are a different form factor (not saying that's bad).
Back in the spring at TRCMA, the Flex rep was talking about the new, more compact 24V batteries, and hinted that the very small size could be used for something else, and that SEMA would be when we would find that out.
Well, it looks like this is it: https://www.flex-tools.com/en/new-era
That said, I don't think that's the exact tool that we will be seeing here, as we will get the 24V version (unless we get the 18V also). I'm not sure what to make of this tool, like the "PiXiE", it's trying to do an awful lot (including a built-in light), but it does have a forced-rotation mode, which makes it unique in this segment. The form factor is....different, but it does have a trigger. I'm sure it will be very expensive.
That guy Josh who does a lot of videos on YouTube is how I found out about it, and from the comments it sounded like this unit has been making the rounds for Beta testing under NDA, the most interesting comment I saw was that the US distribution would be unique to Sonax...which on the face of it makes no sense to me, it's hard to believe that would be right, but if it is, could mean that the only place to get it would be Autogeek, since the Autopia store is defunct.
