Mini drill

[Workshopshed]

I've an old mini-craft drill and it's loosing power on me. I was wondering if I could dissect it and use the bits with a new motor to make a new one.
Has anyone tried anything like that?

[C-Bag]

I'm sorry I don't have any good info for you Andy, but I am so curious.....what's a "mini-craft drill"? Is that what we call over here a Dremel tool? And are you sure it doesn't just need a new set of bearings? Or brushes? I've brought back many a hand held grinder and a couple of hand held drills that way.

The next deeper repair would be to rewind the armature and at that point I usually decide I've passed some kind of balance between amount of time invested to return on said investment. I do get really attached to my tools I've had for a long time. I have all of my first Proto mechanic starter set from 1975, except the top box and a couple of pieces. They truly don't make them like that anymore and it might be true with your drill, dunno.

[Workshopshed]

Yes, it's just like a Dremel.



In the process of looking for a picture I found these
My Minicraft drill has died
HydraRaptor: End of play

Also looking on ebay there do seem to be some quite economical replacements for me. It also gave me the idea of seeing if I could make an adapter for my angle grinder so it could take some of the tools from the mini drill.

[C-Bag]

Wow, that end play link shows that's not much there to scavenge. It does look like it would be pretty straight forward to just replace the motor though.

My problem with Dremel's is they just don't have enough uumph for me and everything I try to do with it loads it down so much I get scared it's going to burn up on me. My go to at work where there was a huge compressor was a small air die grinder. But you need a good sized compressor for the beast. Through HF they are only like $14, but you need a $500++ compressor to run it for any time.

HF also has a long shaft electric die grinder that is awesome. I have two them, but they are much more bulky but they go at 22,000 rpm and I just can't load them down they have so much power.

Have you though of one of those cable drive units that are powered by a bench grinder? I don't know if the limiting factor is cable or the fact it only rotates at 3400rpm, or the cable is too short.

[Workshopshed]

I stripped the drill down last night and cleaned out some of the metal filings. I tweaked the bearing, fan and shaft positions until it ran a more freely, care was needed so that the spindle lock would still engage. After about 45 minutes of tuning it was running smoothly again. The brushes looked ok but the commutator looked a bit dirty, not quite sure how to clean that as the motor is mostly encased with a couple of air vents.

Seems to have done the trick for now. Sorry no photos as I was not actually planning to do that job yesterday.