Disaster in the shop... averted!

[Marc Rochkind]

My grad-student daughter is here for the week, and we spent hours in the shop building a couple of tray-like containers for some keyboards she's designing for her Masters in Mechanical Engineering thesis. The frames were jointed, planed, cut, mitered, and glued, and we had a dado set in the table saw to cut the rabbets in the bottoms. She hit the switch, the blade turned a bit, and then stopped. Another press on the switch, same thing.

Table saw completely dead! Put a voltmeter on the line: OK. Disassembled the switch housing, and voltmeter says there's nothing going to the motor.

This was Wednesday night and she has to leave on Friday! Stores closed today!

Then I looked at the jointer. Both Grizzly, and the switches looked similar. Took the jointer switch out of its housing, and it was absolutely identical to the table saw switch. She swapped them (all jointer operations completed by this time), got the table saw running, and cut the rabbets.

As we go around the table later today and it's my turn to say what I'm thankful for, I'll say this: "I'm thankful that Grizzly uses the same switch on jointers and table saws." Leaving our guests to figure out what the heck I'm talking about.

[Warren Lake]

mostly every machine I have has a different switch. Working on one job a switch went down. My fault I wired it wrong and the manufactured phase was on a coil. I had a deadline so to finish the job I used a piece of wood taped to the part that pushes in and stays in when running. It worked fine, not ideal but work had to get done.

[Richard Coers]

For emergencies, you can just wire around the switch and use the plug to activate the motor.

[Marc Rochkind]

For emergencies, you can just wire around the switch and use the plug to activate the motor.

That was coming next. Table saw would have voice control: "Dad, plug it in."

[Dan Hahr]

Does the switch house a capacitor? Might be the issue..
Dan

[Curt Harms]

That was coming next. Table saw would have voice control: "Dad, plug it in."

Yes it seems like Grizzly does tend to use a few common switches. Useful for maintainability down the road.

[Marc Rochkind]

UPDATE: Daughter's project completed; she is back at school; new switch arrived today. As Curt noted, very common and available from Amazon.