I had planned to cut up some of my recently acquired maple for a project I'm working on. Turned on the dust collector and heard a nasty racket coming from the room where it is stored, and practically no suction. Great.
I disconnected the hoses, removed the inlet splitter, and wheeled it out of the closet and into the shop. No small feat there, either. Looked inside the blower housing and saw that the bolt holding the impeller to the motor shaft was loose. OK, I can fix that. So I proceed to remove the 12 1/4-20 bolts holding the inlet cover to the body of the blower. Well, 11 1/4-20 bolts, since one was stripped out and fell off by itself. Found the proper size allen wrench and removed the tiny bolt holding this thing together. You would think they would use something larger than that tiny bolt, but, oh well. Since I had it this far apart I went ahead and pulled the impeller off to inspect it for damage. It was fine. Cleaned everything up and put it back together, with a good amount of Loctite on that tiny bolt.
Now I look at the inlet cover and see that the gasket is completely shot, so I scrape off the pieces that are still sticking and put on on some new rubber weather stripping. While I'm at it, I drilled out the hole that was no longer holding it's 1/4-20 bolt and re-tapped it for a 5/16 -18. And marked it so I wouldn't forget which one it was.
Take a look at the electric plug and see the strain relief is not relieving any of the strain, so I went ahead and fixed that, too.
Roll it back in the closet, hook everything back up and it sings like an opera star. Mission accomplished and only a couple of hours lost. So I take a break for lunch.
After lunch, I am ready to start ripping some of this 2-1/2" maple. I put in my Freud 24 tooth ripping blade and pop in a new ZCI that I made the other week. Strategically place the fence over the ZCI to hold it down, fire up the saw, and raise the blade up through the ZCI. Everything is cool, got the blade up as high as it will need to be to rip the maple. Hit the off switch on the saw. Nothing! The thing will not shut off! I bend over and look at the switch, the off button is recessed into the switch about 1/8". Oh boy. So I walk around and pull the plug.
Go back to the switch and press the off button and it feels like mush. There is no resistance and no spring back. So now I take the switch cover off, disassemble the innards, and discover that the little round plastic shaft the basically does all of the work has snapped off, right next to where it attaches to the actual button. Oh great, how am I going to fix this. I figured maybe some super glue, but would that hold up? The plastic piece that broke off is hollow to accept a screw which holds the metal plate that presses the micro-switch that turned off the power to the load.
Ok, if it has a screw in one side, why not another screw on the opposite side. So I drill through the remaining stub of the shaft that is still attached to the inside of the off button, right through the button itself. Ran a tiny screw from the outside of the button and into the broken piece of the shaft. I did use the super glue as well, I mean, why not, right? So now I just have to figure out how the rest of this thing goes back together.
I stick the button back into it's hole and discover that it is binding. So I trimmed that hole a little to make things work smoother, figured out where everything went and screwed it all back together, replaced the switch cover back onto the switch body and plugged it back in. Hit the on switch and the saw fired up, hit the off switch, and it shut off. Mission 2 accomplished.
That was enough for one day. Time for beer or three.
Thanks for listening (reading?)
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Originally Posted by Jerry Thompson
