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I know this topic has been beat to death here but I’m wondering if I don’t have a different issue on my hands. Got my xcarve up and running on 16Dec. I’ve run it probably 70 hours total since then. Well, it shut down on me mid carve yesterday. Luckily I was standing right there and could pause the carve before it kept moving. The light turns on but no spin. I’ve read a lot of the other posts here about this issue and I know it’s likely the brushes (ordered some last night) but am I crazy to think they shouldn’t go bad that quickly? I’ve been running it on 2 since assembly and usually keep pretty close to the recommended speeds and feeds rates.
I had the same issue after maybe 50 hrs of use. The router just died with no warning. Lights still came on but that was it. I changed the brushes, even though they looked fine to me, but that didn’t resolve the issue. I had to send the router in for service under warranty and they ended up replacing the circuit board and switch. Took 4 weeks to get the router back.
Chris,
I had mine since 2016 and have replaced the brushes several times. My runtime is similar to what you have experienced. I order my brushes in sets of two. Recommend removing the router from the mount to access the back brush. Happy carving.
Thanks for some reassurance-- Ordered the double set on amazon last night for overnight shipping so i’m hoping it gets here tomorrow so I can make sure thats the issue. I ran through quite a few brushes on my dremels over the years when I was carving everything by hand so I assumed that was the issue but man, 9 days of use seemed odd.
One heavy user ran his Dewalt 611 on setting 1 only, and he would get 150 hours on a set of brushes, routinely. You need to adjust your depth of cut and make your feed rate settings based on the performance of the router and the character of the wood in order to optimize brush life
@LarryM is correct. Overrunning the sideload of the router by having too fast of a feed rate will prematurely wear the brushes as will too deep of a cut. This places undo stress on the shaft bearings, and wears your brushes faster.
Although, too slow of a spindle speed will do the exact same thing.
