Death of a Dremel
My last planned bit of BMOW case construction was a front-mounted LCD. This required cutting a hole for the LCD in the faceplate, as well as a gap for the wires to pass through the steel case front. Once again my trusty Dremel tool was put to use. This time I enlisted the help of my daughter to get some action photos, while I cut through the steel. Look at those sparks fly! Yee-ha!!!
I am a manly man, cutting steel! Unfortunately, moments after this photo was taken, the Dremel unexpectedly shut down. At first I thought maybe I’d blown a fuse, but the house outlet still works fine, and there’s no fuse I can find anywhere on the tool. I tried cleaning out the motor brushes, but that’s about all I could think to try. The Dremel manual doesn’t mention anything about what to do when the tool fails to turn on. I guess I killed it. At least I had the cut about 95% finished, and I may be able to finish it off by hand.
Dremel Tool: 2009-2009 R.I.P
7 Comments so far
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Is it an AC operated Dremel? You need to reseat or replace the brushes. They’re attached to a spring behind the two screw caps on the sides. I’ve had this happen when I’ve overheated mine.
Yes, it is an AC Dremel. I did try removing the brushes, blowing gently on them and into the cavity they came out of to remove any dust, and replacing them. Is that what you mean by reseating? They didn’t look obviously damaged, but I’m not really sure what I should be looking for.
I was a little confused about how the brushes work. Each one appears to be a small magnet connected to a helical spiral of bare wire. But the wire doesn’t connect to anything, as far as I can see.
I replaced the motor brushes with new ones, but the tool still won’t turn on.
What RPM did you have your dremel at? If it was too low, you might have put too much torque on the dremel’s motor, which can cause it to over-heat and possibly break. I’ve cut pc-case steel a number of times w/o issue (usually about setting 6 or 7), but when I tried doing the same on my car, my dremel started to smoke! The smoke was the protective covering over the wound wires of the motor burning off from too much heat. That said, it still works fine (though I’m now very careful to keep it from being to near to metal filings). On another note, my robotics club has killed two Dremel brand tools and one Black-and-decker while trying to cut the steel rim of a trailer tire. Never did figure out how to fix them, only guess is that the coil wires must have fused together. =(
Hi,
You need to disassemble dremel and get to the rpm regulator - its small board, and can be accessed when You will disconnect stator from plastic part where brushes are located - clean this and inspect for any obvious damage - its made from ceramic, so be carefull
usually, if You’re doing lots of metal work it accomodates debree from cut metal, and rpm regulation is not working any more (its either on or off) - in Your case it might be not so simple, but You won’t know if You won’t open it
if all fafils, it is spare part listed in Your manual
Regards,
Sebastian
One other possibility if the above advice doesn’t help. I had my dremel go out when I overheated it. The problem was the grooves that the brushes slide in, they had melted a little bit and as a result even though it really didn’t look like anything was wrong the brushes didn’t slide across the plastic well and didn’t make contact with the stator. I took a file and removed the surface plastic. Now it works fine.
Ivan
Mine just stopped and it was the motor brushes