Black & Decker Belt Sander Repair.

3"x21" belt sander fix. I was at my local home improvement store today and they were having a sidewalk clearance sale. I found this Black & Decker 3"x 21" belt sander that was being sold for parts for a measly $5.00. I figured that as with most tools like this the chances were that the switch was bad. So I thought it was worth the chance for the 5 bucks. I ended up with a really good belt sander for 5 bucks and 20 minutes worth of work. Please bare with me as this is my first instructable.

Step 1: Disassembly of the Case or Housing.

Please make sure any power Tool that you work on is unplugged. Then take out all the screws that hold the casing together with the appropriate driver bits. In this case there were 7 on one side and 2 from the other side plus the bolt for the tension handle for the adjustable handle on the top (That's the black handle one the top). that went completely through the body to the side that came off. Once that is done, you should be able to pry the case apart and pull it off exposing the switch and motor housing. once I opened the case I disconnected the leads into and out of the switch housing. The first thing that I did was to test the switch with the multimeter. Set it to the ohms selection and found the bottom contact was working just fine while the top one wasn't. So I proceeded to take the back plastic plate off of the switch housing to expose the inside of the switch. One of the little white pieces of plastic wasn't pushing the contact down to make the connection. I simply moved it to the bottom of the plastic piece where it sat in and used a dab of super glue to hold it in place. I went ahead and did this to the other one to keep from having the same thing happen later on. Once I was comfortable with it working consistently I super glued the back panel of the switch housing back in place and reconnected the wiring for a test drive. Wallllaaa, works perfectly fine now. While this fix definitely is not the only thing that could potentially be wrong with an item that is being sold as is for parts. It in my experience is the most common type of issue. You need the weigh in the price versus the possible outcome before taking the risk. If you're comfortable with the risk then by all means, go for it. I had other ideas for the unit if I wasn't able to fix it so I was getting my $5 worth either way it went lol. Good luck and if you have any questions I can answer please ask. Thanks and please vote if you like this.