Every January 1st it’s out the the old and in with the new, right?
Well, instead of resolutions and habits it happened with my lathe.
I had a Teknatool Nova Comet lathe and, outside of some minor headaches due to me improving and wanting to do more, I’ve really enjoyed working with it.
Unfortunately, right before I had time off from work for the holidays, where I was planning on doing all sorts of things, my lathe died. It would power up, but wouldn’t spin. The fault seemed to be with the reverse switch, which this particular lathe requires you to press before it starts to spin.
I contacted Teknatool on this, and they were helpful and even sent a replacement circuit board based off of the description and video I sent them. So I really can’t fault them here. They tried. Unfortunately the part they sent did not fix the problem.
The rat’s nest of wires The supposed bad controller finally out The new controller before installation
Getting the controller out was a little on the tricky side, and not just because there’s no instructions for it. In case anyone else needs to do it, here’s what I did:
- Ensure the lathe is unplugged. (It seems simple enough, but remember: common sense isn’t common.)
- Remove the control panel by unscrewing the little screws in the 4 corners. Let it dangle.
- Remove the four small screws holding the control board in place in the back. You’ll need a long scredriver for this.
- Remove the plastic vent on the outside of the case which covers the heat sink cooling fins.
- Now the challenging part. Begin by pulling on the right side of the control board to get it out. The cooling fins were very tight in the opening, causing me to have to bend the board some and really fight it.
- Now that it’s out, begin to move the connected wires over one by one to the new board. They are just simple slide connectors, but they may be tight. Don’t be afraid to use some force.
- Of course, reassembly is just reversing the steps above.
In reality, the last step should be to turn things back on and enjoy your lathe working once more.
Unfortunately mine did not. It’s just doing the same thing again.
So out with the old! In with the new!
I guess I’ll be doing a write up in a little while over what I liked about each lathe. 😁