Help with DW 733 planer

[Wyatt Wright]

Last night my DW 733 planer was running fine. I went to run it tonight and it does not run - at all.

I pulled out the multimeter and checked everything I could reach easily.

120v is getting to theon board circuit breaker, to the switch, and out of the switch when it is flipped on - but the motor doesn't do a thing.

I suppose that I can take it apart and follow the wire as it goes out of the switch to see if it came loose or broke. But I'm not sure how to disassemble the unit to get that far. I don't see an easy way to do this. Do I need to take the top off and remove the guts from the top?

Any help is appreciated.

Its strange that it went from fine to dead overnight without being touched. I would think that if something broke, it would do so while being used.

I am in the middle of building kitchen cabinets and cannot wait for a service center to fix it. I either need to get this thing running tomorrow or I will have to buy a new one. OK, thats not so bad considering that Delta, Ridgid, and of course the Dewalt 735 are very nice, but I really don't want to drop the $400 - $500...

[Ba r r y]

You could probably find an exploded view. Once you figure the easiest way to the motor connections, you can look for 120v there.

Have you checked the motor brushes?

Barry

[Norman D. Crow]

Brushes was my first thought as well.

[Wyatt Wright]

I checked the brushes and they *look* fine, but I'm not really sure what I am looking for. There's a line in the carbon near the spring and the brush measures about 7/16 from there to the curvy paret.

Would they keep the motor from running at all and would they just give out overnight?

[bridger]

a lot of modern power tools have brushes that shut the tool down when they get short rather than grinding them down to the springs.

I don't know how many hours of run time the brushes on that machine are supposed to get, but you might be able to find that info on the web.

[Ba r r y]

I was thinking the unit was moved and a brush got knocked ajar.

Chances are, if they look OK, they are.

Barry

[Wyatt Wright]

I guess the DW735 is going to have to wait. I checked the brushes again - for the third time. They still looked good. I couldn't trace power past the switch without taking the motor off.

So that's what I did. After taking off the top, the chains and sprokets, the drive belt, and a few other items. Thankfully the DeWalt website has some nice videos that show all of this stuff step by step.

Once I got the motor assembly off and the housing into two pieces, I discovered that I couldn't get any further into the wiring. But I did notice that I could stick the probes of the multimeter through some ventilation slots and check the terminals that bring power to the brushes.

Anyway, when I flipped the switch, the motor ran. I have no idea why nor do I really care at this point. The unit went back together without issue and I'm up and running again.

Part of me really wanted a new DW735, but the 733 does a good job and I saved $500 and lost an afternoon. I've will order up a new set of brushes and hope that is where the problem really was.

Thanks to all who responded.

[Ba r r y]

Possibly the brushes needed to be reseated?

Glad to hear it's working!

I love buying new tools but hate replacing existing tools.

Barry

[Dan]

On Sat 20 Nov 2004 05:05:25p, Wyatt Wright wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I have a 733 and there's a part of me with the same wish. I have to lie down till it goes away.

In all the troubleshooting I did back when I fixed office equipment, if a piece worked yesterday but didn't today, it was almost always a bad connection someplace. If you were getting power to the unit but you couldn't even hear a _hum_ from that thing, my gut says something was halting the flow to the motor.

My gut also says you either re-established the connection when you took it apart and put it back together, or you still have a connection that's only half secure. I've seen fuses that work *sometimes*. They actually had severed filaments but the ends touched. Temperature and humidity would make the ends bend away from each other and then come back.

Best of luck, Dan