gac5ss wrote: ↑Sun Sep 03, 2023 7:42 am
By the way, what happened to the guy who developed an alternative version of the PowerPro upgrade? Did SS shut him down, or was the price not competitive? One thing I remember about it was the remote control. That is a nice feature to have.
I went back and found a thread on this. I copied this from RF Guy:
Quote:
Re: Powerpro Competitor
Post by RFGuy » 01 Jan 2019 05:44
I agree that we don't know how many Shopsmith units are in service, how many have the PowerPro, how many have been returned for warranty service, etc. There have been some anecdotal reports of overheating and RFI/EMI concerns and these could be outliers. A DVR motor employs a switching power supply and it appears there is insufficient line filtering and shielding based on my engineering expertise and the symptoms that I have read about, but I admit that I may not have all of the facts. Even if the overheating is an early production unit issue and/or an outlier, for me the bottomline is adding electronics to any machinery will shorten the life of that machine due to failure of said electronics.
Has anyone gotten more useful life out of a dishwasher, washing machine, etc. with an LCD panel? In the consumer market, most electronics are only designed with a 3-5 year lifetime with respect to parametric performance. It may be functional for 20-30 years, but it likely will only meet all specifications for 3-5 years. Is this a concern for the PowerPro? Maybe not, but I am not ready to roll the dice on this kind of product without knowing when the electronics fail in 5, 10 or 15 years that I can get an exact replacement or that an aftermarket community has sprung up to support replacement parts.
This is one potential for this new dvrplus, i.e. as replacements should Shopsmith cease business. Maybe I am holding this product to a very high standard, but remember this is what Shopsmith's image/reputation has been: A product that has been around for many, many decades and will be around for many more so that when you have a problem down the road you can get it fixed and/or buy the newest accessory they create for it.
UnQuote
The Quoted part of RF Guy's post caught my attention. I believe he is correct on life expectations. We as a consumer should not expect the PowerPro to age like the mechanical headstocks. Adding electronics has surely improved usability and performance, but at the same time has shortened life expectancy. Any purchaser of this technology should not expect 20 years or more of peak performance from a PowerPro. Life expectancy would include the number of hours used, not necessarily the age in years. The same would apply to any Shopsmith with the mechanical controls.