Grinder Maintenance

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Does anyone ever do any grinder maintenance?

I was thinking about this yesterday as I dug into my grinder at work. Its only a few months old but I have pulled it apart twice now and each time I am amazed how dirty it is inside. Now just so we are all on the same page, I am talking about one of those 5 inch hand grinders used for grinding steel, or sanding wood or even coupled to a biscuit jointer head.

I find the grease in the angle drive gets burned up every few months and dust and dirt gets collected in the motors fan blades as well. Its just a matter of removing 3 sets of screws to tear these things apart and grease the angle drive, blow out the crap and stone the armature so it gets better electrical contacts.

If you haven't done this, its very easy and will easily add years tothe life of your grinder, plate jointer or sander.
 
After burning through a good three grinders, cheapies and good brands, I started to do this too. I've also found out that the cheapie grinders have really lousy wax like grease that seems to be half dried up when the grinder is new :dunno:

Now I open them up, when new, scrape out the hard grease and replace it with some good gear grease, they even run a lot quieter...... longer too!

Stoning the armature, well, I do it with a little emery cloth, not stone, but yeah, that makes a difference too.

Heck, I've even replaced bearings on my grinders :D

Cheers!
 
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