Jet/Performax 10-20 Plus Drum sander oil leaking and circuit breaker not resetting

[Ken Platt]

Folks -

I'm running into 2 problems with my 10-20 sander, and was looking for any advice on fixes:

First, the circuit breaker which protects the sander (main) motor seems to be flipping off without much reason, and doesn't reset well. The motor isn't hot to touch when it flips. The breaker reset switch, when pressed, will make the drum start to turn, then it stops. After maybe 5 minutes, the drum will start properly and run. I could see this happening if the motor had been under heavy usage, but that's not the case. Does this mean a bad circuit breaker? Or a motor going bad? How would I check the breaker itself?

Second, when I was looking into the breaker problem, I noticed that there was oil under the machine, which seems to be coming from the conveyor belt motor (which is not protected by that circuit breaker. The conveyor belt keeps right on running when the breaker flips). It appears to be leaking around where the electrical cord enters the motor case (it enters at the bottom). The motor runs, it makes noise when it runs but nothing that sounds particularly wrong, or squealing. This is something I've never heard of or read about. Would such a thing possibly be repairable by me? A new motor is available from Jet, but it'd be $200, over 25% of the cost of a new machine.

Thoughts, advice, ideas? Many thanks -

Ken
Granby, CT

[John Coloccia]

First you have to find the source of the leak. I have the 22-44. I believe there's a DC motor coupled to a gear box to drive the conveyor. I guess that must be leaking oil because I can't figure out where else it could come from.

The breaker problem could be a lot of different things. Other people are better than me at giving trouble shooting steps for that.

[Mark Woodmark]

What you are describing in regards to the circuit breaker is the same problem I had with my Performax 16/32. I would have to let it sit for a few minutes before I could reset it and the breaker seemed to trip a lot no matter how little I sanded off (less than 1/64"). At the time I had heard from a few others this was common amongst this sander. Figuring it was underpowered for what I was doing I sold it and bought a Woodmaster. Your post made me wonder if I was wrong and this is a correctable problem. How much are you trying to sand off in a pass and how wide, long, and thick in the piece you are sanding? When I owned my Performax, I wondered if bigger, heavier boards made the problem I was having worse. Have you thought about contacting Jet?

[John Coloccia]

FWIW, I haven't tripped the breaker on my Jet even once. I'm kind of leaning towards possibly a bad breaker on this one, but it's really hard to tell without seeing a current measurement.

[Ken Platt]

This is definitely different than in the past. I've used this machine a fair bit, including one project where I used the 36 grit zirc paper to try to clean up 2x4 hard maple strips from an old bench top I took apart. Yesterday I was lightly sanding short 7 inch wide pieces of figured walnut.

Is there any reasonably easy way to check the breaker?

Ken

[Bill Huber]

My 10-20 will flip the breaker if I run it for a long time and try and take off more then I should. The motor never is hot to me but it will still flip the switch, wait 5 and I can reset it.

I have that problem the most when I am doing cutting boards.