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My power pro started making an odd noise yesterday so I took off the back housing to check what was going on. I saw that the lower belt was starting to rub on the motor housing and after looking a little deeper I found that the pulley on the motor shaft was loose (moving back and forth) and that there was a set screw that was supposed to be holding it secure to the shaft. I removed the circlip holding the pulley in place on the shaft and removed the pulley. There's a keeper key on the shaft for the pulley and supposed to be a setscrew as well, however the set screw was gone. This is what caused the back and forth movement of the pully and the scraping of the pulley on the motor housing.

If anyone has experienced this and you know what size the setscrew is I'm going to check with an auto parts store and/or hardware store to see if I can find one.

Called Shopsmith and waited in the que until I got sent to voice mail, left a message but not anticipating an answer anytime soon.

Thanks

Steve

hondels wrote: Mon Dec 21, 2020 1:54 pm . . .

If anyone has experienced this and you know what size the setscrew is I'm going to check with an auto parts store and/or hardware store to see if I can find one.
. . .

Look in the bottom of the motor pan.

the set screw is .194' (3/16) OD and is 5/16" long.

3/16-32 x 5/16" (my estimate)

It seems to be a fairly common failure. Shopsmith recommends blue loctite on this setscrew as well as the one on the fan on the other end of the motor shaft if you've had one come loose. (I don't think they are making them this way in production however.) I removed mine several weeks ago because my pulley was not up against the snap ring on the shaft and used loctite when I put it back together. I did not check the size, but if I remember correctly it was metric, or at least I'm sure I used a 2.5MM allen to remove it. Using Dusty's measurement, that would make it 5MM but I'm unsure of thread pitch.

Source: https://www.shopsmith.com/mediawiki/ind ... em_Solving

I recall at least two people saying that their pulleys had to be replaced due to some kind of deformation. I think SS covered these under warranty.

- David

Thanks David,
just got a 5mm setscrew and a 3/16 and both appear to fit about the same. I'm leaning toward the 5mm since the setscrew on the fan on the other side of the motor is metric! Why would they mix between SAE and metric? Blue loctite will also be on the setscrew!!

hondels wrote: Mon Dec 21, 2020 3:36 pm Thanks David,
just got a 5mm setscrew and a 3/16 and both appear to fit about the same. I'm leaning toward the 5mm since the setscrew on the fan on the other side of the motor is metric! Why would they mix between SAE and metric? Blue loctite will also be on the setscrew!!

They could be the same, the 5mm is barely more than 9/1000" larger than the 3/16". Might be greater precision than they're made to.

But given the 5mm might be slightly larger I'd use that for something that has come loose before.

Agree Ed, and that's the plan. A little loctite and hope to be back in business tomorrow. Will update once the machine is back together.

I would suspect ANY screw associated with the power pro to be metric. Consider the source is New Zealand by way of China.

JPG wrote: Tue Dec 22, 2020 9:34 am I would suspect ANY screw associated with the power pro to be metric. Consider the source is New Zealand by way of China.

I agree, seems true for anything unique to the PowerPro motor. Most are identified as metric on the exploded view of the headstock, including all the hardware for the mounting rails, mount screws for mounting the motor assembly to the headstock, and alignment screws.

- David

Update on my setscrew issue:

I used the metric setscrew and blue loctite to secure the pulley and that's working well. However, just noticed a rattle of some sort coming from the pulley area that increases as speed increases. Thought it might be the eccentric bearing so I checked that and its fine. Something is going on with the bottom pulley just don't know what it is yet!