More on Sears Repair & Extended warranty

[want2b]

Just went through sending mine back and after all the horror stories was surprised. Only fair to tell about a positive experience along with the bad others have had.
Trbl= Bearings in the Z truck gone, QC worn, cover micro-switch bad.
12/24/8 (Xmas eve) took carver to Sears in orig box, was given 1/7/9 return. Knew that was impossible with the holidays pus travel from De to Tx.
1/6/9 Sears Garland called and chgd date to 1/16, carver just arrived in Tx that day.
1/14/9 Sears Garland called and chgd date to 1/29, some parts replcd, others ordered.
1/27/9 Sears local called, carver there and waiting for pickup
1/28/9 picked up machine, box still in great shape, everything I sent with it was returned. Repair ticket says replaced Z truck, QC and both lid micro-switches. Verified serial # was correct, checked everything was tight, noted rails were 'lubed' well. Then loaded & ran a 2 hour carve with no errors or problems.
Who knows, maybe the repair techs are getting on the downhill side of a learning curve.

[Kenm810]

Glad to hear some good news of a change,
guess there's some hope out there yet
for My Little CC Machine. http://forum.carvewright.com/images/icons/icon11.gif

[MikeMcCoy]

That's good to hear since I also have the Sears warranty on my machines. I think it's not always obvious that for every one of those "horror" stories you mention, there are several thousand satisfied users. That isn't meant as a slam by the way.

[Jeff_Birt]

OK, now that you got it fixed it is time to figure out why all that stuff went bad, and avoid it in the future. Spindle bearings almost always go bad from excess flex-shaft lubricant getting into the bearings. A worn QC is a sign of improper maintenance of the QC (or lots and lots of hours on it), take a look at Downloads section under the Support tab on the main CW website. There is a great PDF there on QC care.

[want2b]

Have done a lot of thinking on 'root cause' as they say. The majority opinin is that overlube kills the bearings. I have 104 hours as of today, only lubed the flex twice due to it getting warm, not based on hours. Both times I used the Gunk with Moly as recommended, let it lay on an old towel for 24 hours before replacing. Guess I soaked in too much? Plan on trying the Crane's Cam lube ChrisAlb mentioned as being able to use in mid-carve. It appears to more of a solid versus a spray and probably won't flow as easily as the spray. I'm guessing the small damage I found on the QC was caused by the loss of the bearings allowing the shaft to move. When I saw it during operation the tip of the bit was flexing over 1/8 inch in all directions(1/4 inch wide cut if you could call it that). Appreciate the feedback here and my earlier post when it failed, great to have people like Jeff & others who share their experience. Carvewright and Sear have saved a lot of money & there are a lot more owners due to this forum.

Rick H.