Shopsmith Forums

Are you cutting board after board the whole half hour? What's the running environment temp? [/quote]

My Shopsmith is in an air conditioned basement maintained at 68 degrees year round. And no, I'm not constantly cutting. The duty cycle is 20-25% cutting vs idle. I'd turn it off between cuts, but ...

Just wanted to give you guys an update. I spoke with Wes Johnson @ Shopsmtih in late June and was quickly sent a replacement power supply. That is a good news-bad news story.

The good news is that I no longer have the sagging problem as the system gets hotter under use.

The bad news is that it ...

It's not necessarily the solder joints that will fail. Thru-hole plating can't accept much stress and the PCB pads themselves can separate from the PCB substrate. A large heavy object cantilevered off of PCB thru-hole (or worse, surface mount) pads that operates in an environment with cyclical ...

There appear to be a couple large electrolytic caps on that power supply PCB. If one of those popped, it'd fit the symptoms, and in-service failure of electrolytics isn't uncommon. Here is a link to info on failure modes:
http://machineryequipmentonline.com/electrical-power-generation/capacitor ...

I spoke with Wes yesterday, who was helpful. It sounds like he took a look at the schematics, and based on the symptoms I described, the problem must reside in the power regulator section of the low voltage side of the power supply. He's shipping out a replacement power supply/motor controller unit ...

Wow! Most of the stress onm the motor would have been accelerating the log rather than maintaing speed during lathe cutting, but those headstock bearings must have been screaming for mercy!

I’ve seen folks do some pretty large turnings on a Power Pro, and have attached a couple of links to videos ...

I already removed the rotor to check for dust as part of the initial diagnosis. The rotor is held on by a snap ring and a set screw, and kept locked angularly with the motor's rotor with a key. Yes, there is a ring (or lip) on the bottom of the rotor that has gaps, which create the edge detected by ...

Ok, here is the results of the latest experiment. I ran the unit for 40 minutes at 900RPM with no load, and there were no failures. Immediately after shutting it down, I restarted it at 2000RPM and let it run for 10 minutes, again with no failures. I was too tempted by the running tool, so I ...

Everett,
Thanks for the tech info! I'm a EE, and familiar with both brushless DC motors and steppers, so I have som familiarity with how DVR motors work.
As a matter of personal and professional curiosity, I'm trying to diagnose the problem myself first rather than just send the whole package back ...

Thanks for the names. I'll try try to get in touch with Wes or Jim next week.
From the lack of responses of "I have that problem, too", I'm guessing the behavior of my PowerPro is not normal, regardless of what the lady on the phone at Customer Service said.