Drum Sander

[ozziebluesman]

Hi everyone,
I've had a Carbatec WDS-100 drum sander for five years now. After I had the unit two years the belt drive motor died and it was replaced under warranty.
Unfortunately it has shorted out the motor again. I've had an electrician look at it and he said its dead not even a new circuit board wold help.
So I need to have this machine in the shop.
Should I buy another of this model, keep the old one for spares or is there a better machines out there under the $1000 mark?
Is it possible to have the motor reconditioned? A new one form Carbatec is $372 Ouch and not worth considering!
Cheers
Alan

[dshaker]

If it were me, I think I would be seeing if I could find a third-party electrical motor that I could use to replace the motor that came from the manufacturer. Maybe I wouldn't be able to to do it but maybe I would. If I could get a better motor in there for less money and was able to figure out how to replace the motor on my own, well, that would be great. I used to know an art school prof that loved to find old metal-working machines - huge band saws and lathes - and then rebuild them and use them for wood working. If you could find a similar character, he's be the guy to give you advice....

[Allen]

There has to be a motor rewinder in Townsville Alan. Worth asking them the question.

On my twin drum Carbatec model, the circuit board went and the belt drive wouldn't move. Didn't know that until I took the motor in and had them test it.

On mine, the motor is a DC unit and reasonably special. They wanted close to $600 with the shipping for it, so I was most pleased when I found it was good, and was only the circuit board. That was still nearly $90 though for something that really shouldn't fail.

[kiwigeo]

I had to replace the belt motor on my Jet Performax drum sander. It started making a horrendous grinding noise...I suspect it was the gear box that was the issue. Unfortunately the gear box and motor are an integral unit.

The belt motors on the Jets run hot and don't have any cooling or vent holes. Ive seen some US owners fit computer fans to cool the motor. Is there any cooling on the Carbatec drummies?

[ozziebluesman]

Thanks Doug for your input.
Allen I will look into having it rewound. It is VDC-90 so I assume it is a DC motor. I know the right people if this is possible to be rewound.
Martin there is no cooling device on the sander. It is a cheap machine but if setup well it works ok. Not very accurately I must add. Still for what I need it is fine. A new one is $899.
I will go the rewind route and see if thats feasible.
Cheers and thank you.
Alan

[kiwigeo]

It was a bit hot here in Adelaide yesterday. I noticed the main drum motor on the Jet was cutting out with only a reasonable sanding job going through the machine. The main motor has venting but no fan as far as I can see.

[blackalex1952]

A machine made in Taiwan would most likely source standard geared DC motors that were used by other manufacturers. DC motors are used for electronic speed control because they are more accurate and provide high torque. You need to work out the control voltage that is coming out of the control board, the RPM, current draw and torque of the geared motor that is on the machine.. It is most likely 12V DC. As an example,the speed of the motor on ebay is 90RPM. For $8.26 AND FREE POSTAGE, your electrician might be able to fit it and problem solved. I would google search other equipment made in Taiwan or china that uses DC speed control motors, eg. CNC machines.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/90RPM-12VDC- ... Swo0JWQqL-
There are plenty of other sources of cheap Chinese DC geared motors, given where the machine was made,and a bit of sleuthing would probably locate the one that was used.
Also, if you decide to go the motor rewind route, and the motor rewind guy says that the motor isn't salvageable, ask if he knows of a Chinese made equivalent, he may be able to source one, at the Aussie dealer price, of course, but may be a lot cheaper than the Carbatec price.
In the meantime, can you work out a way to hand feed the work through the machine the same way the home made drum sander guys have to work? eg. put a board of recycled laminex coated MDF on the feed mat so the spruce can slide easily.

[old_picker]

Is there any cooling on the Carbatec drummies?

no but there is a savage cut out switch that shuts it down as soon as you start running it too hard - running mine for 5 years and done a deal of work with it - you do learn to keep the feed rate and bite size reasonable or you spend all day waiting for it to reset