Shopsmith Forums

I bought my SS in the mid eighty's, upgraded to 520 and now modified it to the Power Pro. On my first project, I was planeing some rather soft wormy Chestnut, and after several hours of intermittent operation, I got a heat warning message on the headstock display. I have read about 50 pages of this forum and found several mentions of heat problems but no mention of attempts to fix the problem by contributors to the forum or by SS, other than "taking" the headstock apart and letting it cool off as described in the literature.

When the heat message showed up, my first reaction was to remove the SS logo from the back of the headstock and hold my shop vacuum hose up to the hole. The heat message went off almost immediately.

I just finished an adapter to fit into the hole in the headstock so that I can insert the vacuum hose so I won't have to hold it on. What have you guys tried to relieve the heat problem. There are many new heat generators in the headstock with no solution except the warning message.

What solution has anyone tried, including SS, to improve the cooling of the headstock so that the Power Pro can come close to the duty cycle of the previous design?

Bob

You are 'sucking' air through the 'access hole'?

If so, interesting!

By allowing unfiltered air into the various openings, another problem may occur. The speed detector led/sensor can get a dust buildup.

I am curious what the ambient temperature was when this problem occurred.

JPG wrote:You are 'sucking' air through the 'access hole'?

If so, interesting!

By allowing unfiltered air into the various openings, another problem may occur. The speed detector led/sensor can get a dust buildup.

I am curious what the ambient temperature was when this problem occurred.

Curious, how does "filtered" air get " into the various openings" otherwise? His "solution" seems sound to me, and seems to help a known problem with the headstock.

I have read a discussion regarding air flow in the Shopsmith headstock - somewhere - but I can not locate it right now. However, if I recall correctly, the Power Pro draws air differently than the Mark 5/V.

Aside from air "leaks", there is a port in the bottom of the motor pan on a Mark 5/V. I assume that same port exists on a Power Pro. I know this does not disclose the direction of air flow but it is all I can contribute without "hands-on)".

interesting , maybe there is a issue with the heat sinks design ?

I havent seen the boards and do not own a power pro , however if there is a over heat issue wouldn't a low voltage fan like used n a computer work? maybe put a sink on the back or bottom of the headstock ?

I turned over 100 bowls and cut out over 30 bandsaw jewelry boxes from 2010 to 2015 without ever getting a overheat warning. However, my PP bit the dust in 2015 with no error message on the display. I have sent the display and power supply in to SS but haven't heard back from them in over 3 months. My vacuum cleaner can either suck or blow, so I think if you were to blow filtered air into the access hole you would do less possible damage by not introducing dust into the headstock. Did my PP fail due to heat buildup? I guess I will never know.
Fred

I've not seen the error but I'm guessing the duty cycle has a lot to do with it. I was doing some cutting the other day and the temperature was 87 degrees and humid, I know I sure was hot......

I would also worry about air flow when either a fan or other device is added to move air unless the air is filtered. If you are removing or adding air the volume of air goes up but so does the volume of dust. Unfortunately dust collection on a shopsmith is not that great so a lot of dust in the air would result in a lot more dust being taken into the headstock. This would not be good.

If one were to do this the air would need to be clean, ie taken in at some distance from the dust source or filtered. If filtered that would imply before it enters the headstock as in forced air into rather then taken out of.

I will say that I have found very little dust inside the headstock, I would say less then with the conventional headstock but have now way of proving that.

Also keep in mind that while we have mentioned the sensors that need to be clean so does the heatsink. Adding dust makes the cooling all the more difficult to do. The more dust collecting inside the worse the cooling.

As far as solutions, one would be not to push things on hot days, increase the non-running time vs the run time. Don't push the machine, the harder it has to work the more heat produced, this can mean lowering the feed rate slightly.... And I will add making sure you are using a dust collection system.

I've ask before (without getting any answers)on those that are seeing various problems on the powerpro, either sensor errors or heat issues, are you using dust collection? I don't mean sometimes but rather all the time. I think the powerpro really needs one to use dust collection, I know it just my opinion but think about it.

Ed

If there is an over heating issue with the Power Pro (and especially one that could be resolved with a fan) do we not have reason to believe that Shopsmith would have cured that?

Heat is a major killer of electronics. I have already lost a power supply. It would seem to me that drawing more air through the Headstock with a regular "blow out" maintenance regimen is far better than than burning up $500 power supplies and controllers. I am going to look into this. I get overheat errors when routing/shaping constantly. With SS not protecting the customer from the internal failures of these units beyond 2 years, a little extra maintenance is worth doing.

JMHO

And, I'm sure you know the planer table likes a good slick wax-coat... Might be the secret on how the 2010 publicity materials for the Power Pro stated they put 1 Mile of lineal boards through the planer on a stress-test.