Today I was sawing through some 1 1/2″ pine and my tablesaw hit a knot. All of a sudden you could hear the motor struggling and then the blade stopped. It all took about a second and now the tablesaw doesn’t work. What happened? I was completely surprised by this. I have cut through 1″ maple, oak and cherry without any problems only to have pine mess me up? Can I fix this? I have a G0444 tablesaw from Grizzly.
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Replies
Have you checked the circuit breaker?
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-- P.J. O'Rourke
Dose the motor have a reset button? I am assuming you checked the breaker.
Edited 7/14/2008 7:35 pm ET by gofigure57
Mr Rip,
You may have blown a fuse or similar failsafe device within the motor circuit. Fuses are useful as they stop the motor burning out when it gets a heavy load and is caused to draw more current than the motor windings would like. My prevous TS had a clever device that broke the circut by popping out a small button, which could be returned when the thermal detector driving it up had cooled down.... That button was well-hidden in the guts of the machine and I only knew of it via reading the manual.
RTFM - always good advice. :-)
Hopefully you have not actually fried them motor windings - an event that generally causes an unpleasant stench.
Lataxe, who also fears Big Knots.
I checked the manual and could find no mention of an internal fuse or of a reset switch. This of course does not mean there is not one! The troubleshooting guide in the manual says only to check the house fuse or breaker and after that the wiring.
Hopefully the magic smoke did not have time to get out of the motor!Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. -- P.J. O'Rourke
Look for a small red button somewhere in the motor. I overheat my El Cheapo TS regularly when cutting thick hardwoods. After the mandatory 15-minute break, you hit the button and yer off to the races. Until next time. ;-)
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
Edited 7/14/2008 8:51 pm ET by MikeHennessy
Thanks everyone. I did not see a button but will look closer. I also did not smell anything when it stopped so hopefully there is no permanent damage. Kinda having a bad debt and went to the workshop to relax so when this happened I just had to walk away.
Let me start this post by saying that I have spent the last two weeks spending every waking hour either working or studying for the CPA exam that I took today. (and which I don't think I did as well as I was hoping) After taking the exam this morning and being angry that things didn't go quite as planned I wanted to work in the shop. When the tablesaw stopped I just figured it was the worst day ever and walked away figuring I was going to have to purchase a new tablesaw.
Okay, does everyone feel sorry for me yet?
After reading the posts I have to admit that, with my head hung in shame, it was the breaker tripping that was the problem. The tablesaw is fine.
I apologize for wasting your time. (Though if you hadn't said something my deep freeze would have been unpowered all night long, and who knows how much longer)
Hey Rip, I hate to tell you, that these things usually come in threes, any you have only mentioned two, so don't let your guard down yet. ;^)OK maybe the freezer was supposed to be the third.
Maybe I will just stay out of the shop for a while. It's too hot anyway. It was well over 100 outside and the garage is even hotter.
Yea, You ought to just go drink a cold one, and celebrate that your saw isn't broke. Your freezer didn't thaw, and maybe you did better than you think on the exam. I hope so. Good luck.
Ya know some days yer jus better off strappin the canoe on top and goin for a paddle. Oh yeah, and maybe take a few cold ones in a cooler - along with your safety vest of course.
:-)
Glad to NOT hear of any harm being done,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
FWIW, when I took the EIT exam (the first part of the PE exam) in '76, I just knew that I was wasting my time. When we broke for lunch, I told my buddy that I was gonna bail out 'cause I was so completely overwhelmed. There was just no way I knew enough to pass.
He told me that I would be an idiot if I left and that I owed it to myself to at least finish the thing - if for no other reason than to see what the rest of it looked like so I could try again next time.
Reluctantly, I went back and afterwards over pizza and beer, we took a solemn oath to not discuss the test or guess how we thought we had done. When the results were mailed a few months later, I had passed and he hadn't. Man was he pizzed!!!
Continuing the saga, when I took the PE exam in '81, I was again convinced that I didn't have a chance. IIRC, the pass rates were around 35% - 40%, so I just knew that this was gonna be a real mother. I decided to just take the thing and see what it was like and then get serious on the next go-round. I walked in, cranked it out, and was on the way home by around 2:30 to help SWMBO get ready for a Halloween party.
You guessed it.........I passed. When people asked me how well I had done, I told them that I really didn't know if I had passed by one point or ten - and that I didn't care. I passed that rascal and that's what counted since I never wanted to go thru that again. - lol
Just a big Homer "Doh" head slap will do fine for us. Really, who of us hasn't had the opportunity to show our evolutionary short comings. Glad it was just a circuit breaker, which if it does it again, you should change. They do wear out, and after being tripped several times, seem to be more sensitive. Hope your exam went better than you thought. IN that case there is no rule of 3, the TS moter was not a problem, the exam went OK and you don't have to worry about an 3rd. However, Never understimate the rule of three! AZMO <!----><!----><!---->
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who of us hasn't had the opportunity to show our evolutionary short comings..
Hell, I do that at least one a week or maybe more!
WillG,
By definition, if your genes have evolved to make you, a currently extant being, they do not suffer short-comings - especially compared to the zillions of genes that have not made it and been consumed in the aeons long competition for survival. There are many dead-ends in the evolutionary furze.
Of course, some folk like to pretend they can predict the future or even adjudge current fitness concerning biologial entities and their fitness for life. Ah ha! Only time will tell. Some may believe it is intelligence or ability to play the stock exchange that makes their genes future-proof. Some even belief that woodworking is the key to succesful procreation! They may become disillusioned (or they would if they had not become extinct).
The biosphere is a contrary divvil and coming centuries may see all the genes of today's topdogs obliterated by some strange factor that favours snaggle-toothed freckly folk with an IQ well down the scale. It will be their ability to tolerate heat, perhaps, or their appetite for food made from insects that sees them prosper. Maybe it will be just an accidental ability to survive the next pandemic that will see them through?
In all events, ability to make dovetails and to sharpen one's own saw is unlikely to figure in the winnowing process.
Lataxe, a common enough breed hisself but probably hyena-food in most circumstances.
I've had two of those moments in the last week... I've been working on finishing my basement. A friend's father is doing al my mudding and taping. I met him downtown two weeks ago and gave him the house key off my Jeep keychain. This weekend I had to run out for supplies, I wasn't driving (and my wife was away and my drywaller out of town) so I just grabbed the first set of keys I saw (yes the jeep keys). Locked the handle from the inside, then when to deadbolt the door... No house key. After 10 minutes of panic I realized I had my car keys in the cargo pocket of my shorts.The second was when I was adding to the central vac. Cut the line got all my connections cut and dry fit. Took it all apart ready to glue it, then went for lunch. I go thinking about the electric connection so I popped off one of the covers upstairs to check it out. It came of pretty hard, so I wanted to make sure that I didn't loosen any connection. So I plug the vacuum in and turn it on. I hear it turn on out in the garage... but no suction. Crap what did I do now? After a minute of panic I realize that the pipe is all taken apart in the basement. Silly me.Anyway you're in good company with your test. My wife write her CA exam a few years back, and we were prepared for her to write again. But she passed. In fact the only friend that didn't pass was the one that said he was sure he did!
Dude, if you fail the test, you just take it again. Brother things can get much worse. Atleast you have your shop to go to. And I know when I'm working on personal stuff(ie kids furniture) and not work cabinets. I'm in the zone and lovin life. So relax and think positive Bro.
-Lou C
iamrip,Sorry to hear that things have been so stressful. But PLEASE, don't try to work with power tools as a way to unwind from the kind of turmoil your mind has been in. You need to be able to calmly focus around power tools. You could have done something to injure yourself. I'm glad nothing happened.Think about the little mistakes you made and how you were unable to reason things through in your state of mind. A simple circuit breaker problem, forgetting you had left the vacuum hose disconnected, etc. They were minor problems, but it sounds like, distracted as you were, you could have accidently done something dangerous with the saw running that could have resulted in injury.And over 100 in the shop! Yikes.Fatigue and being distracted are not conditions consistent with safety.Stay safe.Rich
Indeed. Working with power tools while PO'ed is asking for an unplanned amputation. I'm not sure I'd recommend hand tools under such circumstances (mainly because you're likely to saw through your line and get even more irritated...)
Look at it this way.....if that's the worse thing that happens this week, it's a pretty good week! :)
I apologize for wasting your time. ???
It was a Honest question in my mind! Nothing to apologize for!
Thanks everyone for your input, both the technical and the safety input. You are all correct in that I probably shouldn't have been in the garage in my state of mind. I suppose the good thing is that I learned a number of things through this incident.
1. Check the breaker if the machinery stops.
2. Stay on the left side of the tablesaw as you move wood through the blade. When things went bad I couldn't turn off the saw since I was blocked by the board. The stop button is on the left, I was on the right. (I've already learned not to stand directly behind the board thanks to a friend of mine getting hit by a small piece of wood. Het bullets are small too)
Thanks again everyone for your help. This is the first time I have had anything mechanical like this happen. Thankfully nobody got hurt.
There is, by the way, a better way to run high-amperage motors (such as would be on a table saw) than a standard light or outlet-type circuit. To do so, you do want a dedicated circuit for these machines, though you can run more than one machine off of the same circuit, so long as only one machine is turned on at a time.
The breaker for these circuits is sometimes called a "heater" circuit breaker, sometimes a delayed-trip circuit breaker, and sometimes a "motor" circuit breaker. Essentially, these circuit breakers are designed to allow a significant over-amperage to run through the circuit for a short amount of time. This over-amperage is called an "in-rush" current, and is a result of the impedance of the motor windings as it comes to full voltage and starts the machine. Generally, these breakers are a snap-fit replacement for a standard breaker in a circuit distribution box.
One other note - it's not a good idea to run high-amperage motors through an extension cord if it can be helped. Under-voltages are not good for electric motors, and the typical extension cord is 14-gauge wiring and is typically quite long, which results in starting the motor with less voltage than its designed for (and when significant resistance is placed on the motor, such as when cutting a thick piece of oak on a table saw). If you must run a stationary power tool with an extension cord, it's best to choose a relatively short (less than 25 feet) length of at least 12 gauge, and 10 gauge is even better.
I realize this wasn't the issue with this incident, but it could save you problems down the road.
You ought to seriously consider not having the TS or any large power tool on a circuit with anything else that might be running at the same time, like a freezer. Even an extension cord from another circuit might be preferrable, until you could have a little wiring done.BrianP.S. this is not only for convenience, but for the long term health of your machines
Edited 7/16/2008 1:58 am ET by BrianDerr
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