Failing equipment

[LCHIEN]

When you have too much stuff the failure rate starts to approach the frequency of use.
Went to the shop this last night to cut a piece of wood to repair the potting bench shelf that my wife overloaded with a bag of gravel.
The remote switch for the Dust collector wouldn't work. The fob blinked; that told me it had a good battery.
After I cut the wood I checked out the DC, fortunately it worked but the remote relay box I built did not... the remote control AC switch was bad.
Like a dutiful EE I opened it up to see what I could do, I did find the circuit board got real hot around what appeared to be the power supply part of the little board. I checked near the charred diodes and found that they had seriesed two diodes in one diode component location and that both were shorted...

I could replace the two diodes but there's no guarantee that was the original causal failure.
Amazon had a AC remote switch for $11. shipped.
WIth my consulting rate I could buy a lot of those for an hours work,. I just ordered a new one.

So to the original premise, can you have so much stuff that every time you turn something on there's a good chance something related in your shop has broken? Are you on perpetual maintenance then?

[twistsol]

As Nana Roseannadanna used to always say "if it's not one thing it's another." If I look at my to do list right now, there are two things in the shop that need to be repaired which is a list dwarfed by the 1,000 things around the house that need to be done. While it may seem like it, I don't think most of us have enough stuff to be guaranteed to have something fail every time you go into the shop.

[leehljp]

Looks like you went from EE mode to Actuarial mode.

Your premise hits me right between the eyes! There have been a number of times that I have had to fix a tool before I could use it, and it was working the last time I used it.

So the question is - ". . have so much stuff that . . ."

[capncarl]

I guess you could resort to hand powered tools only! Then you would spent the same amount of time sharpening tools, or worse, finding work arounds so you could actually finish a project before you tired of it and used it for fire wood. I'm never satisfied with my tools guards, dust collection, fences, hold downs etc. and still spend endless hours trying to improve their performance, even if they do run properly.

[mpc]

Had something similar a couple months ago when some friends were in town, their three kids like "Uncle Mike's" shop. The youngest wanted to make a whale as a visual aid to her school research project + presentation on Orcas. Okay, get the little band saw set up, tensioned, adjust tracking, and then help her. "Bang" says something inside the saw... not the blade. A tire popped in half (original tire... who knows how old) and jammed between the wheel and casing of the saw. Just a surprise. Okay, put that away and get the big band saw out, set-up, tensioned, tracking, etc. Fire it up and begin the cut... notice the blade is not as steady as normal and that it seems to be "walking" forwards. Tracking way off? I'd just checked/set it before powering on the saw. Peek into the tracking window and see the TIRE is tracking off the upper wheel, taking the blade with it! The adhesive quit adhering. So much for band sawing her project. We ended up using the scroll saw which took a long time on this thick workpiece. Never had both band saws out-of-service at the same time. Ordered and replaced all 4 tires.

Usually it seems things that need alignment drift suddenly in my shop. The alignment would be fine for the last half-dozen times I worked in the shop... then for no apparent reason it needs significant tweaking this time. I have a habit of verifying alignment of key tools prior to first-use of each shop session just as a safety check. Most of the time it's a quick "yup, still good" minute.

mpc

p.s. another few seconds and that "walking" tire would have pushed the blade forwards enough to start digging into the blade guard/door of the upper bearing column. There really is a reason it's there!

[Woodboy]

What drives me crazy is the small part that could be replaced, but can't be accessed. My old stainless steel barreled shop vac has a bad on/off switch - it stays on all the time, solution - you have to manually unplug it. It is inaccessible and the manufacturer is not motivated to help me solve my problem - I might just buy a new one - perhaps that's the motivation. Just used it as a wet vac to suck out about 10 years of muck from the bottom of a water feature pond. Worked like a champ, other than the switch. As the child of a depression mentality parent, I have a little of the make due / fix repair gene that gives me great pleasure to fix something and I really want to fix that switch - just not in an after market "non-elegant" way. Plus the time value of time argument always kicks in and I have to fight the urge to try and save everything. Now what to do with the 32" boat anchor Sony TV that if I am lucky someone will take off my hands for a large fee - still good as the day it was built, just not current technology.

[dbhost]

I still simply walk over to the DC and turn it on. I need my steps in my fitbit anyway. I am gonna wear out that cheapie HF switch eventually!

[LCHIEN]

on a side note amazon had a remote for $11.50 but then I saw a triple remote for $15.. on transmitter with thre pairs of buttons and three remote modules..
Whopee. one for the DC and one channel for the overhead lights!

And a spare. What shall I control.... Ah, the Air filter! But I've got it on a 0-15 hour delay timer so it cleans the shop after I've turned in for the night, usually run it for 3 hours.

So what should I use the third channel for?