Table saw pulley disintegrates!

[Jim Mackell]

Last night while I was ripping some cypress for some Adirondack chairs, the Sears TS made a funny noise and the blade began to wind down. Unplugged the machine and began to explore the innards. After seeing that the link belt was no longer attached to the blade pulley I removed the shroud around the motor pulley and found that the motor pulley had basically disintegrated! The outside edge of the pulley had broken away from the main body, which allowed the belt to fly off. 15 or 20 year old machine but still - how often do pulleys fail! Fortunately the part is readily available and I'll be back in business when UPS or FedEx arrives.

Interestingly, I had picked up a spare motor at a yard sale years ago. But the pulley had already been scavenged!

[Lee Schierer]

It might be a good time to change to a machined steel pulley instead of the OEM one that failed.

[Mike Henderson]

It might be a good time to change to a machined steel pulley instead of the OEM one that failed.
Agree. They also tend to run true (no wobble) compared to the non-machined pulleys.

Mike

[Dave Cav]

Some pot metal parts can age and corrode internally, and then just fall apart. I had a low end import clone of a Delta bandsaw I bought in the late '80s and all of the pot metal parts just disintegrated after about 20 years. The saw went to the metal recycle, but the motor lives on running an old Walker Turner belt/disk sander, now in my neighbor's shop.