This has me stumped. I was cutting a piece of half-inch plywood, about 15" wide, on a contractor-type table saw. With an inch or two to go, I heard a sound that seemed louder than normal. I completed the cut, and as soon as I did, the saw began squealing louder than I had ever heard before.
I shut it off and investigated. Nothing unusual on top, but when I looked at the back, I saw the motor was hanging all the way down.
Two things looked wrong to me. First, on this kind of saw, the motor pivots. There's a screw in a slot that's supposed to keep it from pivoting down too far, but that had broken off.
But why was it able to do that? Shouldn't the belt have held it in its normal position?
Everything else in the back and underneath was completely tight.
I use a link belt on this saw, and it sure looked as if the belt had suddenly gotten longer. As an experiement, I removed six links, and put the belt back on. I put a new screw in the pivot slot. I made a couple of small test cuts, and it worked fine.
Does anyone have any idea what happened? I can't believe that a link belt would suddenly stretch that far, but with nothing else being loose, I don't know what else to think. Anything I should check for?