Modern Mirka sanders have a wealth of excellent features from anti-vibration balancing to quiet operation to multiple orbital speeds. You can even download an app for it. Yes, an app. For a sander.

Admittedly, it sounds a bit over the top, and it could have been, but Mirka has made sense of connecting their sanders to your phone. We’ll walk you through the process and explain why.

After downloading the  myMirka app, your sander needs to be paired with your phone. Simply press and hold the “+” button on the sander while powering on. When the middle LED on your sander lights, it can be paired. Your tool will appear on the control panel screen so you can confirm. But why should you bother? Safety mostly.

1) The app shows you the speed that your sander is running at in real time, which can be helpful since there is no actual gauge on the sander itself. And with some of the Mirka cordless sanders , you can preset the orbital speed in the app. But the primary task of the myMirka app is to monitor vibration, and that’s what you should care about most.

2) The sanders have built-in vibration sensors and share info with the app, so you can constantly see how much vibration is happening and how long you have been exposed to it. We’ve all shaken our hands to get the feeling back after sanding too long, and we instinctively know it’s not a good thing. Using the monitor features in the myMirka app can help you and your employees to reduce injuries.

The app will also show if the sander is vibrating too much. The  DEROS sanders can be adjusted for balance. If you change pads or add an interface, following the instructions in the manual will compensate for the extra weight and keep vibrations at a minimum. This saves wear and tear on the sander and again reduces stress on wrists.

3) Finally, you should think about the app as an experimental laboratory. You can literally track the actual time it takes to sand a project. By recording this info with the orbital speed, abrasive being used, and the type of sanding disc, you can take the guesswork out of which sanding set-ups produce the best results in the least time. No more guessing.

Although the Team at 2Sand isn’t generally in favor of connecting everything to our phones, after realizing the very real benefits, we will definitely be using the  myMirka app.