Pneumatic Drivers

What are people's opinions on Pneumatic Drivers? We are still using a manual Fletcher driver. A couple of the women that work for us have had carpal tunnel and feel it comes from the driver. Additionally, when shipping our frames we've seen a number of cases where the "points" are coming loose.

I have often wondered about the pneumatic drivers. Are they worth the cost? How do you physically have them set up? Is the air connected from above or just a hose on the ground?

Would love to hear feedback on advantages/disadvantages, or anything else I'm not thinking of?

You guys have been great, thanks for the feedback!!

 

99% of my framing uses bendable points so all the below relates to bendable but I don't think there would be any difference with the fixed points.

Worth it's weight in gold to my 71 year old hands. I have the Fletcher pnematic. I tried an generic brand first and it didn't work well - drove the points too far and couldn't be adjusted.

I use the manual Fletcher for years and no matter how I adjusted it, it wouldn't drive the points far enough; they could come out after being bent a few times. The Fletcher Pneumatic drives them perfectly.

Yes, its expensive at around $400, but worth. I still have a manual driver for fixed points and the few times it gets used, I think of using bendable points in my pneumatic driver instead.

The air connection can be any old way you want. Mine is overhead and shared with an air blower.

 

Pneumatics are the way to go. I have several that I use for point and nailing. One thing that I find helpful is a spring tool balancer, hangs from the ceiling and takes the weight off the nailer operator’s hands. You can get one at Amazon for $12 and up.

 

I switched over to pneumatics. MUCH Better than the manual.
I tried some of the inexpensive brands, but settled on the Fletcher ones.
They cost more, but they don't jam and they don't fire multiple points at once.
They also just feel better.
I built a manifold on a harness at one end of the table and have two air nozzles, one hard point driver and one flexi point driver hanging there.
Next to my dry mount table (used for fitting) I have one hard point driver.
I am building another 8' fitting table and will duplicate the first setup there when it's ready.

 

Our shop has a Fletcher FrameMaster driver, and I swear the things has a hair trigger. It's excellent for doing large volume orders, and the points get in there really deep.

The ONLY problem I've ever had was while framing mirrors; there is another company my shop works with that sometimes outsources their mirror framing to us. Their method of putting frames into mirrors is to put the mirror in, secure it with points, and then use hot glue around the inside.

The pneumatic driver straight up broke the mirror. So, unless you have a piece of foam core or other protective material between the points and the mirror, you don't want to use the pneumatic driver. It will break the heck outta some glass.

Which, you should have something behind the glass regardless; beats me why they insisted on doing it this way.

 

Put a piece of 2-ply down (can be a strip that you move around), fire the points, remove the 2-ply.

 

Fletcher Pneumatic Drivers both Flexi Master and Frame Master all the way. I would not be without them anymore, saves time and drives the points perfectly, I don't know why I didn't buy them sooner.

 

I don't know if they are available in America but the best phneumatic tools i have found in Australia are made by Stanley Bostich. I had a Stanley stapler and nail gun when I first bought my business and neither was new then. The nail gun is still going strong and the stapler only died because I could no longer get parts for it. The Paslode I replaced it with only lasted a couple of frustrating, jamming and misfiring months before I bought another Stanley which I sold with the business.

 

I recently bought a Bostitch staple gun from Active Sales, and have been very happy with it.
Rick