dropped foredom

mark yundt · #11 03-27-2008, 08:53 AM

In an apparent effort to end it's own life ,,mine has taken spectacular Swan Dives off it's 6 ft perch more often than I can count. You think I'd learn. I've broken the grommet off the power cord,,dented the body,,broken the collet connecting the shaft to the motor,,kinked the shaft so bad it froze the motor...no wonder it wants to kill itself with me at the controls. I think it would be easier to break an anvil than one of these. If I ever do manage to destroy it ,,,I'll have another that very day. I have multiple replacements for all the parts,,,except the motor,,,I don't think that'll ever go. Of course now that I've said that,,guess what will go next?

Hooked · #12 03-27-2008, 09:33 AM

I emailed Foredom and described the problem with the switch on the motor. Their reply was that I should send it in to them to fix because that switch has 6 wires and requires soldering. Just my luck, drop it once and it has to go in for repairs.

With my Foredom broken I tried my first wood burning with a Sue Walters step by step lesson. Not to bad for my first try.

susieq · #13 03-27-2008, 10:30 AM

Geeze Mark!!! Someone needs to run an "intervention" on your unit to find out why it is so suicidal......

Seriously, that hook it's hanging on ...can't it be made into a loop like the ends on IV hangers? Knock on wood, mine doesn't seem to do that other than what I mentioned earlier.... Yours must be inhabited by an evil spirit or something.

Wow, HOOKED!!! if that is a first effort at burning, I can't wait to see what you do with some experience. Very impressive. Maybe the crashing Foredom was fate, pushing you to try this. Don't stop now....

Hooked · #14 03-27-2008, 11:16 AM

That is my first try, but credit should go to Sue Walters and her lesson, not me! I hope to incorporate wood burning into my carvings, but still not sure I am ready to risk ruining a carving if the burning doesn't come out like I hoped it would.

mark yundt · #15 03-27-2008, 11:17 AM

Sure it can,,,and I do safety wire it when I think of it,,,but I'm always cobbling together some makeshift hangers in the unusual situations I get myself into. If I only stayed in one spot it wouldn't be an issue,,I could have a real work bench,,but NOOO,,not me. I don't use it too often anymore,,but when I specialized in birds I had a real slick work station. Designed a vac/dust collection system and all. Had a real hanger for the Foredom too. Now,,,forget it....every tool is on it's own for survival. Heck,,,you should see what I've done to my NSK....it's a crime.

Hooked · #16 03-27-2008, 11:25 AM

NSK? Do you use that for high speed uses? I sell dental implants and we sell a surgical unit made by NSK. Max speed is 40,000rpm with a 1:1 hand piece. Could use a 1:5 hand piece and get 200,000 rpms though. I don't think the one we sell would survive like your Foredom has though!

Was at a dental conference recently and the booth next to ours had a 400,000 rpm hand piece that was driven by an air compressor. They also had a piece of wood there to try it! Man, that thing was slick! Almost no noise and when you carved it fell more like you were drawing with a pencil than carving. It carved so easiliy, it literally was like cutting butter with a hot knife.

susieq · #17 03-27-2008, 01:56 PM

Hooked,
one of my favorite bits is a "bone cutter" dental bit. I got one at a surplus dental supply while going through their entire selection of bits one afternoon. It took every bit of 2 hours to look at them all as they were loose and I had to pick them out one by one to examine. But you couldn't beat the price. Most of the diamond bits were a buck a piece and this one and only carbide bone cutter was probably fifty cents. I loved that bone cutter!!

I kept hoping they would get more in but they never did, so I went to my dentist and he said the receptionist would order me anything I wanted. She was very nice. She got out all the dental catalogs and we looked at bone cutters......sticker shock set in because those things are expensive. I ended up ordering several different ones. Some 3/32 shaft and some 1/16 shaft. They were all $20 and up. I paid over $30 for one of them. But for cutting stop cuts with power, they are hard to beat. The smallest ones are great for undercutting details too, if you can get in at an angle.

I keep a 1/16 collet in one of my micro motor hand pieces just for the dental bits.

I would love to have a micro motor handpiece that turned 100,000 rpms, never mind 200k or higher. I believe in speed if the power is there to back it up. I haven't seen any serious power carvers go to air turbines for regular detail carving yet, but plenty of them use it for gunstock checking and engraving....also carving ostritch eggs. I am patiently waiting the arrival of my new Foredom 1050. It might get here this week or early next week.
Probably my last major expenditure for tools, for a long while.......

Hooked · #18 03-27-2008, 07:48 PM

what is the Foredom 1050...guess I could go to their website and look!

Hooked · #19 03-27-2008, 07:51 PM

just checked it out on their website...talk about sticker shock!! I guess if you are able to recoup some of the $ by selling pieces it wouldn't seem as bad, but I am not there yet!

susieq · #20 03-27-2008, 10:31 PM

Hooked, I have wanted one of these for a while but wasn't willing to part with the $$ until I tried one. A good friend of mine is a Foredom rep and also a very talented and well respected power carver. When they came down for the winter, I went over to his house and tried the unit out. It is everything it is cracked up to be. It does have a bunch of extras on it that I will never use but it has power, rpms and it's a Foredom.....and he got me a substantial discount. I saved about $300 on the retail price. There are several suppliers who sell it cheaper than retail though.... Christian Hummel for one.

I have a high end micro motor from Foredom from 10 years ago. It was way ahead of it's time then....you can't go wrong with Foredom. Yes, I do sell my work and I did work into the expensive equipment in stages. I started with the little 5 speed dremel (still have a couple and use them) Then Santa brought me the big Foredom shaft tool one year. Great for hogging wood....
Then I finally took the plunge and bought a micro motor because for detail you cannot beat a good micro motor. I didn't buy all this stuff at once.

And if you missed the other thread where I wrote about having a carving damaged while being returned from the gallery, I received a check for $600 for that from UPS. I put that money toward the unit. What the heck, the fates conspired to make it possible. That might never happen again....

ps
Hooked, if you work for a dental company, you should have a high speed micro motor. If your company sells NSK, you might get a discount. NSK is one of the high end micro motors too..... good machines. Dental bits...you have access to so much. think about it.....