While helping my son repair some steps to his deck and drilling some 3/8 ho les through the stringers yesterday, my Makita 18v LI drill crapped the bed . Plenty of battery, but it wouldn't drive the bit. I love that drill. So this morning I drove 30 miles to the Makita service center to see if I some how busted the clutch. Turns out I must have knocked the top as the speed control was in neutral. Since confession is good for the soul, I never eve n knew the damn thing had selectable speeds :-)
While helping my son repair some steps to his deck and drilling some
3/8 holes through the stringers yesterday, my Makita 18v LI drill crapped the bed. Plenty of battery, but it wouldn't drive the bit. I love that drill. So this morning I drove 30 miles to the Makita service center to see if I somehow busted the clutch. Turns out I must have knocked the top as the speed control was in neutral. Since confession is good for the soul, I never even knew the damn thing had selectable speeds :-)
-------------------------------------------------------------- Reminds me of that age old question, "What's the difference between an Oriental and an Occidential"?
Answer:
An Occidential learns from his mistakes while an Oriental learns from the mistakes of others, it's cheaper.
While helping my son repair some steps to his deck and drilling some 3/8 holes through the stringers yesterday, my Makita 18v LI drill crapped the bed. Plenty of battery, but it wouldn't drive the bit. I love that drill. So this morning I drove 30 miles to the Makita service center to see if I somehow busted the clutch. Turns out I must have knocked the top as the speed control was in neutral. Since confession is good for the soul, I never even knew the damn thing had selectable speeds :-)
Larry
We all do that at some time in life. Our toaster quit working. took in apart. Checked all the circuit board parts. Checked OK. Cleaned the switch contacts even though they looked OK. Reassembled toaster. Still dead. Then noticed the GFI tripped. Reset ,,Toaster OK. WW
You are lucky you could find the GFI reset. I looked for an hour for it in a house we had recently moved into. The circuit I was using was on the outside receptacle and I finally found the reset in the bathroom.
Been there, done that. Not a toaster, but took item apart, checked it out. Then noticed that the radio connected to the same circuit was no longer playing. The pitiful thang about it was that my brother was standing there waiting for me to get it working.
Once, when doing FOH sound at a large outdoor festival, I watched a well known band leader and inventor of a piano pickup (a Rice EE graduate, no less) piss off an audience to the point of riot; first by being almost two hours late to start his set; then by totally disassembling his electric piano onstage because it wouldn't turn on, Only to discover, after another 45 minutes of wasted time while the audience became even more under the influence/unruly, he had neglected to plug it in ... oops!
#1 rule of troubleshooting electronics: Check the voltage, first. ;)
Consider yourself more of an intellect than a dummy if it took you that long in your life to do something like that. Most of us accomplish a task like that much earlier in life.
Whilst patching some drywall holes left by the plumber, I managed to drop my Panasonic 15v on the tile floor. I picked up the drill (a strange 5 second rule) and turned it on. Nothing. Fuck me says I. Turns out the two speed control ended up in the middle which gives out a rattling sound and a free wheeling clutch. Set it back to low and all was well. Phew. I will never ever drop a drill again (the pledge). mahalo, jo4hn
Gordon Shumway wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
the stringers yesterday, my Makita 18v LI drill crapped the bed. Plenty of battery, but it wouldn't drive the bit. I love that drill. So this morning I drove 30 miles to the Makita service center to see if I somehow busted the clutch. Turns out I must have knocked the top as the speed control was in neutral. Since confession is good for the soul, I never even knew the damn thing had selectable speeds :-)
Yep, as an old time techie, who went to school to learn this stuff, I am well acquainted with that rule.
A mantra that was pounded into our heads was, First, check the power supply. If you have no power, you have no electronics. If there is no power, then the problem lays in the power supply itself or the power cord. Once that first step is done, you can start to look for problems elsewhere.
One thing I also looked for when dealing with any kind of audio equipment was switches. When a piece of equipment has several different "modes" you can easily switch off what you want. So go through all the switches. Either a switch is turned off or it failed. I replaced a bunch of switches in my time. And a few power supplies as well.
Another old time trick I used on audio or radio gear was to simply change out the capacitors. If the equipment was old at all, I assumed that the capacitors were dying or dead. Putting in all new capacitors sometimes created a "miracle cure" for any old favorite piece of gear.
It was amazing the number of fixes that were done with just the above steps.
Hell, I design electronics for a living. You'd be surprised how many of my colleagues don't know that the electronics don't work unless the power supplies are working. It's always the simple things. When it's not, blame the programmers. ;-)
..or half way between two positions.
Computer equipment, too. Except that by the time the capacitors have failed, I don't want the hardware anymore anyway.
This technique doesn't work on the stuff I design, either. The capacitors are new. If they're bad, I have a much bigger problem. ;-)
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