Dewalt 611 wearing out brushes

I’ve been running my Dewalt in the X-Carve and I am on my 1st replacement set after 16 months of almost daily use.

no, air flow good. I use it almost every day, probably only got about 50-60 hrs on the last router.

Do you get a lot of black carbon dust coming out of the router or can you see a lot of black dust inside?

If the brushes are rubbing they will wear out quickly due to mechanical friction but the carbon dust will collect inside. If they wear out without leaving a lot of dust they were electrically arcing. Electrical erosion vaporizes the carbon leaving little physical residue.

I probably got about 150 hrs or more on the first router, but when I changed the brushes it sounds like the bushings are bad in it also. will see if I can get new bushings. Going to take the newest one back to Lowes because the 90 dats to return it is not up yet.

How do you prevent that from happening?

I blow it out after every use. Is that a mistake?

I use an air compressor to mine everyday and blow it out as well.

There should not be a lot of black carbon inside. If you are seeing any then the brushes are rubbing to hard against the commutator… This could be due to badly adjusted brush neutral setting, interpole strength, low brush spring pressure or poor brush seating.

If it is still under warranty I would just swap it out.

Thanks I am switching it out tomorrow.

I have the same problem with the dealt 611 the brushes are at the end of them I need others
I u dressing that I need to keep lots of them and change them once a while …
Don’t think there is much to do about it maybe release stress from the springs or use other springs instead … but it’s a bad design for a machine that has to work for hours … it needs to be a business motor

Sorry the phone corrected me I ment a brushless motor

Brushed motors wear their brushes down - however in some cases it may help prolonging service life by performing a “break-in” to have the brushes form to the commutator fully.

Generally speaking:
Run it gentle (low rpm) and without much load for the first few times, this allow the brushes to wear down uniformly (relative to the commutator). High power load early in this process can cause uneven wear/increased spark within tool. This reduce efficiency and increase in brush/commutator wear.

YMMV :wink:

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@AngusMcleod
Me neither! (RC Pilot/builder for 35yrs, all electric since NiCd was the norm… :wink: )

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One of my ribbon cables was also built in a way that made it impossible to align the red pin 1 marking with the marks in the board connectors.

@KelvinBardwell it seems like this issue is another topic that doesn’t relate to the 611. Can you please move it to another post? Also if you are having an issue with the cable would you be kind enough to contact Inventables support to get it fixed up?

Ohh. I think it was mistake in reading a topic. Thanks for your support.

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What is the recommended speed? Medium? Is the lowest setting too low to cut hardwood?
Lastly, where do I get replacement brushes?

Thanks!

In general keep RPM at the Dewalt lowest setting (16k RPM)
This is plenty for most applications.

Amazon have replacement brushes for the Dewalt.

I haven’t seen any benchmark photos of how the wear is at a certain number of hours, so I thought I would post this. This is the old brush @ 250 hours compared to new. Spindle speed has never been over 1. (note- not long to go before it would have eaten into the lead wire itself)

-Just an FYI

By the way…This is an accurate 250 hours, not an estimate. I have an hour meter wired in parallel.

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Remember to register your DeWalts - in EU you get 3 year warranty upon registration. But has to be done within ?30 or 60 days of purchase.