Shopsmith Forums

Hi I am new to this forum so this might already have been covered. I live in the UK Scotland actually and support is non existent.
My proplaner only runs at one speed and I have traced it to the potentiometer speed control. There are no markings visible to establish the range or whether it is a linear or log component. Can anyone out there help?
The next problem will be tracing a replacement!
Thanks in anticipation.

This thread on the Planer Feed Motor may be helpful to you, but it doesn't paint a rosy picture for finding actual replacement parts.

My first reaction is to try any potentiometer suitable for the voltage and current shown on your motor's nameplate and try it out. The speed control numeric settings had no specific meaning so you'll just have to figure out what works based on the material and cutting depth.

I have no real advice to offer you, but I wonder if your unit is stuck on slow speed, fast speed, or something in between. If slow speed, it might not be too difficult to simply live with it.

I also wonder if your Shopsmith Pro Planer was modified to run on UK voltage.

Welcome to the forum! I haven't had to do this repair myself, but have stumbled upon past threads that discuss this. The thread Ed mentioned is a good one, but in that thread is another thread referenced that is more detailed. Please read this entire thread linked below to get some insights. Key point, from that thread, is that the metal case of the potentiometer is believed to be an additional heat sink for the Triac. In replacing the potentiometer you may not find one that is a direct replacement so keep this in mind. Worst come to worse, you could always add a heat sink to the Triac to mitigate this should thermal prove to be a challenge. Also, it is possible the potentiometer is the only "bad" component, but most likely it wasn't the first failure, i.e. something else could need replacing. Another challenge is I don't know if you will find an exact potentiometer replacement which will make it hard to put it back together with the speed control knob. In the thread below another forum member got creative on replacing the potentiometer to keep it functional. Good luck with it and let us know how it goes.

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