Pushing my Dremel too hard?

[glendresser]

Yesterday, my Dremel shut down in the middle of a big job, and in opening it up, it seems like the brushes got jammed inside. When I pulled out the springs, the carbon blocks were stuck inside and I had to use tweezers tro scrape away and extract them. So now I'm wondering if that was just bad luck, or if I'm expecting more out of my dremel than what it's capable of.

The job I was doing was removing a lot of walnut, with a 3.175mm mill on 1.5mm depth, running at about 1200mm/s, and the Dremel turned up to 35K rpm. The job runs for about an hour in total, and this was the third time that I had run the job that night, with about a 15 minute cool-down between jobs. I'll replace the brushes, but given that the brushes weren't worn-down, just jammed, I'm not sure if that's a long-term fix.

I've also got a Proxxon IB/E, but I've already decided not to use it for this sort of job because with a top speed of only 20K it seems somewhat underpowered for this. Does anyone else use their Dremel for significant stock removal, or would I do better to switch to a DeWalt 660 for this type of job?

[madmanmoe]

Sounds to me like you're pushing it too hard. Dremel's aren't designed to run continuously even if they aren't under stress.
Proxon are better at continuous operation, so if you pick a slower feed rate / cut depth that would work. But if you're going to be running large jobs like this regularly then it's definitely worth investing in a more powerful router.

[glendresser]

Thanks, that's what I suspected. I found a beat-up old Dewalt 660 at a garage sale for $20 today. Seems to run fine but needs new collets. Hopefully it'll be the solution I'm looking for.

[Improbable Construct]

I found a beat-up old Dewalt 660 at a garage sale for $20 today.

Nice find.