A neighbor asked me to have a look at this polisher. It was pretty clear that the switch had disintegrated and needed replacing, but just look at the construction and fixing arrangements for the motor:

[Linked Image]

The bearings sit in plastic moldings in the two halves of the casing. The shell of the field stator assembly relies similarly on two little plastic lugs on the case moldings to keep it from rotating, as you can see from the little notch on the end.

The brush and rectifier assembly is on a plastic carrier which just drops on to two more moldings on the bottom half of the case and relies on a couple more projections on the top half to keep it in place:

[Linked Image]

Now is it just me being picky, or does this seem like a really cheap and nasty way of constructing a motor for a power tool? The whole thing seems to rely entirely on the two halves of the case being perfectly aligned just to keep the armature correctly centered within the field.

Oh, and when I pulled the armature out of the stator in order to get everything lined up and re-assembled, look what happened. One of the field magnets just came straight out with it! I guess they skimped on the glue. [Linked Image]

[Linked Image]


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 04-04-2005).]