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Step 9What Else Can We Learn?
We might as well call this step "What Not To Do"! I just couldn't stop myself from opening the motor compartment to see if there was anything else I could remove or supe-up.
The black plastic cover slipped right off exposing the field magnet, which is actually two strong electromagnets. The black plastic cover appears to be a dust cover. I guess I'll leave this on too. Man, I'm really getting lenient in my old age.
It just took two screws and a tug on the casting and I was staring into the belly of the beast. The bad news was as I was gutting this pig I heard a loud "CLICK" and my heart sank. I forgot about the brushes! Yep, there they are. I now need to remove the brushes because the commutator won't slip past the brushes now that they have been driven inward by their springs.
What's a commutator you ask? The commutator is the part that the brushes rub against in order to energize the motor. It's all very interesting and if this is new to you check out HowStuffWorks for an explanation. Just make sure you click the "Next" button to see the animation.
Anyway, you can see that the carbon portion of the brush is long and intact, so these will work fine for hundreds of hours, or 288,000 races!
The next photo shows a fan that I had to fight the urge to remove! Even though a 2 second race isn't going to cause the sander to overheat. I can't see this little fan slowing the sander down by a measurable amount, so for now, it stays.
The black plastic cover slipped right off exposing the field magnet, which is actually two strong electromagnets. The black plastic cover appears to be a dust cover. I guess I'll leave this on too. Man, I'm really getting lenient in my old age.
It just took two screws and a tug on the casting and I was staring into the belly of the beast. The bad news was as I was gutting this pig I heard a loud "CLICK" and my heart sank. I forgot about the brushes! Yep, there they are. I now need to remove the brushes because the commutator won't slip past the brushes now that they have been driven inward by their springs.
What's a commutator you ask? The commutator is the part that the brushes rub against in order to energize the motor. It's all very interesting and if this is new to you check out HowStuffWorks for an explanation. Just make sure you click the "Next" button to see the animation.
Anyway, you can see that the carbon portion of the brush is long and intact, so these will work fine for hundreds of hours, or 288,000 races!
The next photo shows a fan that I had to fight the urge to remove! Even though a 2 second race isn't going to cause the sander to overheat. I can't see this little fan slowing the sander down by a measurable amount, so for now, it stays.
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