I just posted this over on Minimax Yahoo user group but thought I ask here too in the hopes that somebody here has any suggestions.
Last weekend I was doing a few cuts on the MM16 (4 mos old). At one point when I pressed the ON switch the saw started then after gaining full speed it then wound down and stopped. There have been occasions in the past when due to cold hands in the shop I just didn't get the switch depressed all the way and the saw only started up momentarily, although for less time than this instance. Thinking I had another similar case I depressed the switch again and got nothing. After checking for all the normal stuff I popped the doors open and checked the micro switches. Nothing seemed wrong there other than a bit of dust so I vac'ed them out good the pulled the switch box out and vac'ed out a bit of dust in there as well. The breakers weren't tripped and I checked it in another outlet on a different breaker and still got nothing. If I plugged the saw back in, I could hear the relay tripping at the switch so there's power getting to the switch. I also noticed with the switch pulled out of the column that there was a electric buzz that I hadn't noticed before. There's also no way the amount of cutting I was doing should have triggered any sort of saw protection circuitry. I did check the voltage at the outlet with a DVM but turns out I wasn't measuring correctly.
Contacted Erik Loza @ Minimax on Monday to ask questions. He said the buzz I heard was an indication of low voltage and suggested 2 things to do:
1) Pull the switch out and remove the white plastic cover then apply some WD40 to the mechanical movement parts of the On button switch
2) Turn the small white button inside the switch from 30A down to 25A
So today (another Saturday when MM isn't open) I tried one of the fixes and am still getting nowhere. Thought I'd ask here to see if there's anything anybody can recomment to try this weekend. Here's what I've got:
1) The voltage at the outlet measure 238V. I'm real reluctant to try turning the setting on the switch from 30A to 25A based on this.
2) After lubing the switch mechanism
With the saw unplugged the button seems to have a rough spot when you depress it and I THINK it's supposed to latch and stay depressed. I can only get it to stay in about 25% of the time.
With the saw plugged in there's supposed to be more resistance, but now it's REAL hard to push in.
3) The elec buzz sound from the switch is much louder than before with the switch out of the column.
Any thoughts?? Do I just have a bad switch or ??