I have been using the Dewalt 611 as my spindle in my X-Carve for about four months now and today while doing a smaller two hour 3D carve the router died. The light still comes on but the motor is dead. Anyone else have this issue?
Brushes?
That is what I was thinking… but not sure
Yep, the brushes are toast on this thing… guess the X-Carve is down while I order a couple (and a couple spares)
Me too, it is brushes.
They are easy to change once you open up the case. You will need new brushes, a torx bit and some kind of hook to pull back the little coil spring (I used a dental pick, a paperclip would probably work).
I did not like how mine died mid carve (Yikes!) I wound up switching to a Makita because it has the easy acces brush ports. Not so much for changing them, but for being able to easily check remaining brush length before a long carve.
Yeah I opened up the case and noticed the brushes were gone. I previously had the Makita on my X-Carve but prefer the Dewalt. I guess I’ll just have a couple brushes on stand-by.
I love a good cautionary tale. Just ordered a 4-pack from Amazon - juuuust in cast!
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Can you point at the url that you ordered from or the replacement reference from dewalt?
Just to keep an eye. Thanks.
Must be a rash of failures lately - mine just died last week. Didn’t know about replacing brushes, so I took it in to the local service center, and it’ll be three weeks before I see it again. But I’m gonna get some brushes for next time.
Thanks Mike.
What is exactly the mission of those brushes in the router?
According to Wikipedia…
For certain types of electric motors or generators to function, the coils of the rotor must be connected to complete an electrical circuit. To accomplish this, a copper or brass commutator or ‘slip rings’ are affixed to the shaft, and springs press braided copper wire ‘brushes’ onto the rings which conduct the current.
Mike can you post a link to where you bought them from?
I bought some from here…haven’t used them yet…
http://www.amazon.com/Dewalt-DWP611-Porter-Replacement-A27343-4pk/dp/B00X1LF708/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458518900&sr=8-1&keywords=dewalt+dwp611+brushes
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The ones in Erik’s link are the same ones I ordered.
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Same as I did also, link-wise. I actually have a spare DeWalt on the shelf that I just swap in when required, then refit the brushes on the out-of-unit router while the other one continues the job.
Yep, mine quit after less than two months. I too just took mine back to the local store I bought it from and they replaced it.
Can you guys give the rest of us a rundown on the behavior of the router immediately prior to the failure?
Any sparks, odd noises, change in performance? or did it just die?
Anybody care to estimate how many hours of use their 611 had before the brushes gave up?
If we collected some data in this thread, we could calculate a Mean Time Between Failure and thus an estimate of how often we should tear down our machines to check the brushes.
To be honest I heard it make a weird noise but wasn’t sure if it was the Dewalt 611 or my shop vac and then shortly after that it gave up the magic smoke. I didn’t notice a bunch of sparks or billowing smoke. As soon as I took the top cover off I could tell that the brushes were spent. I put the new brushes in today and it works great. I ordered both the replacement brushes from amazon and the replacement brushes in the holders from eReplacement parts to see both options. ordering just the brushes are the most economical way to go but if you don’t want to mess with the spring and reloading the brush than the replacement holder is the way to go.
I have no idea how many hours I’ve run this dewalt. I would say that It has been used heavily. I have run multiple long jobs in excess of 8 hours and a bunch more smaller jobs. I agree that it would be cool to have that data but I am terrible at tracking time on projects (mostly because I’m afraid of what my hourly shop rate would actually be).
You should generally be running your router at a low speed and at that speed it is quiet enough that you will be able to hear the arcing of brushes when they are about to go. It’s a ticking that grows louder and quicker as they wear out more. Another sign I just learned about is the that the arcing brushes can actually interfere with the Arduino causing jobs to stop.