New to ME Makita Angle Drill

I'm going to be using this drill for sanding on the lathe, after the cheap HF version of the angle drill blowed up real good

I got this on Yahoo auctions here in Japan, first one I've seen in a while on there. I won the auction for $26, and the shipping was $10 (I thought is would be only $5, but the seller was all the way up in Hokkaido, the most northern part of Japan). They retail here for about $160, for a new one.

Here it is.........


I took it apart to see how everything is inside.....


The switching area looks good, nothing burned etc, the brushes still have lots of life and the armature looks good too. I very lightly sanded, or cleaned up the armature.


The drive gear and all the bearing are in great shape, the grease was a little old, and a bit dry, so I repacked the bearings and such with new bearing grease.


The one thing that was rusty was the paddle switch, not a big deal, but while I'm cleaning it up, might as well deal with this.


I set up my electrolysis tank and let the paddle switch bubble away, and boy did it bubble!

This is as it was turned on, and about 5 minutes later.....

I went to the L shop to work and came back about 10 hours later........

hardly any bubbles at all.......

cont

........


So here is the paddle switch just out of the bath, the black spots you see used to be rust


After I wire brushed it and wiped it clean, no more rust!


This is the sacrificial nail that I used, look at all that rust!

Now I know that the rusty paddle switch was a plated item and even with all the rust gone, it was never going to look nice again, as the plating is gone, but I wanted to just stop the rust, so after removing the rust, I painted the paddle black


and I cleaned the whole drill up, not bad for $36
Should last a long time, you can see just by looking at it the parts are so much better and the design of the unit is completely different than the blowed up HF unit.


Now to the concern about grabbing it and turning it on, I can see where there could be a problem, but when I pick it up, I grab it under the paddle lever, like I would a 4" angle grinder.....


When I want it on, I just lift my fingers over the paddle lever and I got power.

I will not be using this crawling around in an attic, but on the lathe, so I think I can come to grips with it

Well that is about it, I hope I've learned the lesson about buying good tools the first time out this time, I though I had, but I slipped, so now I'm back on the wagon, so to speak, and as a bonus, I got this one at a great price, yeah it has a few bumps and scrapes, but so what, it is still rock solid, and from what I can see, I have no reason to think it will stop working any time soon.

Cheers!

Stu....I've always gone with "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" but you've once again jumped right over that and made something "new to you" into "almost new in box" condition. Well Done

BTW, I forget what kind of solution you use for the "letrolisys" bath. I just found an old battery charger for 25 cents and want to try it out.

Thanks Jeff, I too believe in the "Ain't broke, don't fix it" but I wanted to just check everything, sometimes a used tool has sat for a while and things like grease dries up and or bearings just need some TLC, so worth the time to check things out.

For the bath, you use about one tablespoon of baking soda (I used washing soda, a little stronger than baking soda) to one gallon of water. Warm the water up a touch, not as hot as coffee, maybe bath water hot, when you add the soda, makes this mix better and cook better too.

If you are filling a large tank then mix up the soda with one hot water gallon, all the soda at once, say you are mixing for 10 gallons, put ten tablespoons of soda into one gallon of hot water, mix well, then add that to the 9 other gallons of water, just easier is all.

Remember, the negative lead goes onto the piece you want cleaned and the positive lead goes onto the sacrificial piece of steel. One last thing, make sure the battery charger is unplugged with connecting or disconnecting the leads, one of the by products of this process is Oxygen which can explode if you had a high concentration of it and a spark......

Have fun, it works like magic, but do be careful!

Cheers!

Thanks Stu...especially the safety factor...I've been known to start fires, cinge hair, etc...don't want to post my own "blowed up real good" post.

C'mon Stu, admit it. You just didn't like the awful orange color of the last one, so you replaced it with something that goes with the Dungeon decor better.

I still feel bad the other one went blooey. I strongly suspect mine is simply waiting for a better, more critical time to die on me.

The orange color was good, if I dropped it I could find it..........





Don't feel bad about helping me out with the HF unit, it was cheap, and I did relearn a good lesson.......

I'd like to learn more about that electrolysis your doing there.
Also just curious, what house voltage is used in Japan?

Grant Curtis said:

I'd like to learn more about that electrolysis your doing there.
Also just curious, what house voltage is used in Japan?

Click to expand...

Hi Grant

If you do a search here on electrolysis you will find all the bases covered, a few times

Here in Tokyo, we do 100V 50 Hz for household stuff and 200V 50 Hz as well, down South, near Osaka, they do 100V 60 Hz and 200V 60 Hz.

Cheers!

Stuart Ablett said:

I'm going to be using this drill for sanding on the lathe, after the cheap HF version of the angle drill blowed up real good

Click to expand...

If you haven't seen anything burn up in a while HF power tools are always the first choice for a good time. There's just nothing like the smell of an electrical motor burning up. Well worth the cost.

Good report on the rebuild!