Shopsmith Forums

I am in the middle of making a ladies sewing machine cabinet, when my cabinet saw takes a dump! The motor acts like it's restricted, setting off the internal reset switch. I assumed it was built up saw dust, (still do!). I blow out motor w/compressed air. No change. I turn the saw up side down and it works fine. I turn the saw off for a couple seconds. Before the blade stops turning, I turn back it on again. It works great! I let the saw run for a few minutes then turn it off. The motor emits blue smoke and smells like burning wood. The motor is hot! Frustrated I go in the house. Any suggestions before I remove the motor from the saw?

dadohead wrote:I am in the middle of making a ladies sewing machine cabinet, when my cabinet saw takes a dump! The motor acts like it's restricted, setting off the internal reset switch. I assumed it was built up saw dust, (still do!). I blow out motor w/compressed air. No change. I turn the saw up side down and it works fine. I turn the saw off for a couple seconds. Before the blade stops turning, I turn back it on again. It works great! I let the saw run for a few minutes then turn it off. The motor emits blue smoke and smells like burning wood. The motor is hot! Frustrated I go in the house. Any suggestions before I remove the motor from the saw?

I do not have a Sawsmith but it sounds to me as though you have a motor that is compacted with sawdust.

I would not run the motor any more until after you have made certain that it is not full of saw dust. You may have to pull off the end caps of that motor to get it cleared out.

Blue smoke that smells like sawdust = smoking sawdust. If you got it hot enough to smoke it is hot enough to burn!! That stuff can smolder for several hours!! At this point I would highly recommend that you pull the motor and remove the end caps(bells) and blow the sawdust out of the winding set and hope that the smoldering dust did not burn the formvar insulation off of the windings.
Bill V

Good Luck!

I followed Dusty's suggestions, no luck. I removed an end cap off the motor and carefullly removed the armature. Then blew everything out. I got very little saw dust. I put everything back together. Same situation! I think it's time for motor repair!

dadohead wrote:I followed Dusty's suggestions, no luck. I removed an end cap off the motor and carefullly removed the armature. Then blew everything out. I got very little saw dust. I put everything back together. Same situation! I think it's time for motor repair!

Is the start switch disconnecting the start windings??? A pix of any 'scorched' windings will be helpful. The start winding is smaller wire. If the run winding is scorched, . . .

dadohead wrote:The motor emits blue smoke

Is there a good way to put the smoke back inside things where it belongs?

Have any luck?