Hi all,
Today my DeWalt SDS drill started to lose power, then gave off a burning smell and whisps of smoke came out from the motor compartment. It's about 2 years old, but has been heavily used in that time. What are the obvious things that might be wrong with it? The instruction manual says that the brushes should be replaced when the drill loses power, but doesn't say anything about burning smells or smoking - could brushes be the problem, or is it something more serious?
thanks,
dan.
It does sound like the brushes have gone, so change them and it should be OK. The burning smell is most like the ends of the brushes under heavy load.
Brushes, or you have lost a coil on the armature... if the latter the replacement part is not actually that expensive (IIRC there was a posting here a few years back - might have been from Grunff - about obtaining a new one for a DeWalt)
The burning smell isn't good. If you were loading the drill, particularly at lower speed (less cooling) when it happened, I suspect you might have overheated and burned out part of the armature winding (usually get a shorted winding). If you've got spare brushes, it's worth changing them to see if that was all. If you have a shorted winding, power will remain low and drill will overheat again when it wouldn't have before.
In future, if you have got a drill too hot, run it at full speed with no load, as that cools it quickly. Just stopping using it can result in more damage as the excess heat will just slowly make its way to areas where more damage happens.
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