26-05-2021

Click the image to step through.

How our new drill NEARLY worked

Arrived a day late but what's a day when we waited for so long, we reckon it must have got stuck in the Suez Canal. Chris H, Alan p, Bill K and Mike F turned up to install it - needed all four of them, after all it weighed over 100kG. Floor drilled, stand bolted down and headstock fitted, oops did you notice that dent? Then they turned it on, all went well until they opened the chuck guard which had a power cutout attached. It sure did work and tripped ALL of the power in the workshop. Must have done something wrong - reset the power, opened the guard and tripped all of the power AGAIN.

Time for Chris H to contact Axminster - "electrical fault" they said "you'll have to send it back."

Take it all apart - bit of luck they hadn't thrown the packing away but I must admit it was quite a chuckle watching them get it back into it's box and all taped up.

The story didn’t quite end there. It worked fine for a few days after it came back and then Bill wanted to drill a big hole. After trying to work out what the label on the side meant we finally managed to slow the speed enough. All seemed fine until we started to drill a hole and then, guess what – you guessed it didn’t you? The power tripped AGAIN. reset, drill ran until put under the slightest load and POP the mains tripped AGAIN.

As we don't want it repaired AGAIN we now need to take it apart, Axminster have said that they want the whole kit and kaboodle returned which will entail unbolting it from the floor and re-packing ready for them to collect. Watch this space to see what happens next.

Author: Chris Nixon