Hi all,

Today my DeWalt SDS drill started to lose power, then gave off a
burning smell and whisps of smoke came out from the motor
compartment. It's about 2 years old, but has been heavily used in
that time. What are the obvious things that might be wrong with it?
The instruction manual says that the brushes should be replaced when
the drill loses power, but doesn't say anything about burning smells
or smoking - could brushes be the problem, or is it something more
serious?

thanks,

dan.

wrote in message
...
Hi all,

Today my DeWalt SDS drill started to lose power, then gave off a
burning smell and whisps of smoke came out from the motor
compartment. It's about 2 years old, but has been heavily used in
that time. What are the obvious things that might be wrong with it?
The instruction manual says that the brushes should be replaced when
the drill loses power, but doesn't say anything about burning smells
or smoking - could brushes be the problem, or is it something more
serious?

thanks,

dan.


It does sound like the brushes have gone, so change them and it should be
OK. The burning smell is most like the ends of the brushes under heavy
load.

wrote:
Hi all,

Today my DeWalt SDS drill started to lose power, then gave off a
burning smell and whisps of smoke came out from the motor
compartment. It's about 2 years old, but has been heavily used in
that time. What are the obvious things that might be wrong with it?
The instruction manual says that the brushes should be replaced when
the drill loses power, but doesn't say anything about burning smells
or smoking - could brushes be the problem, or is it something more
serious?

Brushes, or you have lost a coil on the armature... if the latter the
replacement part is not actually that expensive (IIRC there was a
posting here a few years back - might have been from Grunff - about
obtaining a new one for a DeWalt)

--
Cheers,

John.

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In article ,
writes:
Hi all,

Today my DeWalt SDS drill started to lose power, then gave off a
burning smell and whisps of smoke came out from the motor
compartment. It's about 2 years old, but has been heavily used in
that time. What are the obvious things that might be wrong with it?
The instruction manual says that the brushes should be replaced when
the drill loses power, but doesn't say anything about burning smells
or smoking - could brushes be the problem, or is it something more
serious?

The burning smell isn't good. If you were loading the drill,
particularly at lower speed (less cooling) when it happened,
I suspect you might have overheated and burned out part of
the armature winding (usually get a shorted winding). If
you've got spare brushes, it's worth changing them to see
if that was all. If you have a shorted winding, power will
remain low and drill will overheat again when it wouldn't
have before.

In future, if you have got a drill too hot, run it at full
speed with no load, as that cools it quickly. Just stopping
using it can result in more damage as the excess heat will
just slowly make its way to areas where more damage happens.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]