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mtylerfl
06-22-2011, 11:16 AM
Hello,

Was running a project the other day and stopped it at about 90% to scoop out a little sawdust. When restarting, the machine resumed, but the Cut Motor was not running. I had to abort the project and placed the board into my other machine (an "A" machine with the QC). It worked like a champ and everything lined up perfectly - yay, CarveWright!

Later on, I checked all the normal things...cover switch, wired connections, inspected x-termination board/C1 capacitor...all was well. So, I took off the cover and pulled out the top-most motor brush from the Cut Motor. Aha! Well, there's my problem! Besides being very worn (374 cut hours on this machine), the copper braided wire had broken loose between the carbon and the brass contact. Peek at the photo below to see the comparison between old and new brushes.

I replaced both motor brushes and it's "alive" and well! the motor sounds so s-m-o-o-t-h! Better than new!

As AL has always said, don't forget to change your motor brushes as part of your normal maintenance routine. CarveWright recommends motor brushes at approx. 250 cut hours. Took only about 30 minutes overall and I didn't even have to remove the cut motor to do it (although it was "interesting" working with a mirror and my fat fingers for the underside motor brush replacement!)

gregsolano
06-23-2011, 12:03 AM
Glad that is all it was, I have my brushes I bought at the conference at the ready.

CarverJerry
06-23-2011, 05:30 AM
Now I'd say you got your money's worth out of those brushes, but at least it was an easy fix. I replaced mine at around 250 and they didn't look that bad, now I'm sure I could have gotten another easy 50 more hours out of them. Once you do change them out how does one keep track of the hours on the cut motor?

CJ

mtylerfl
06-23-2011, 12:12 PM
Now I'd say you got your money's worth out of those brushes, but at least it was an easy fix. I replaced mine at around 250 and they didn't look that bad, now I'm sure I could have gotten another easy 50 more hours out of them. Once you do change them out how does one keep track of the hours on the cut motor?

CJ

Hi CJ,

I wrote down the hours and date when I replaced the brushes (on a strip of blue painters tape affixed to my machine). You can check your "Usage Odometer" (power on-time, cut motor time, scan time, servo time) periodically, to see when the next brush change is due: Turn On Machine...Press "0"...Press "3" to view the cut motor hours.

This makes me think of something....might be cool for someone to design a "form" to record general maintainence things like this, as well as dates when/if a part is replaced or repaired, etc. The form could be taped to the machine or at least kept somewhere convenient and readily at-hand.

unitedcases
06-23-2011, 02:21 PM
I dabbled with Excel quite a bit. Let me see what I can come up with tonight. Or by the weekend......

mtylerfl
06-23-2011, 03:07 PM
I dabbled with Excel quite a bit. Let me see what I can come up with tonight. Or by the weekend......

Sounds good!