What do you really get for a $350 desk top engraver ?

the end of the shaft snaped off. i just pulled it apart to see what i could find. that's pretty odd

Makes me wonder if this could have been my source of the surface finish issues i was chasing around before? to me it always seemed to be coming from this axis. it's almost looking like a material defect in the shaft material? it's hard to say for sure but i will keep an eye on my finishes to see if that gets better after a motor swap.

the shaft twisted off right behind the bearing. the whole thing came apart in two pieces with the end of the shaft and bearing in the end cap of the motor. no crashes so it seems odd on a 2 Nm motor i would guess it would stall before something this drastic would happen taking a guess.

 

I said it was unusual. It had to be a flaw as you can stall a motor that size with your hand! First I've seen like that..

I've seen those before but not on such a small size motor, that always happens when the shaft is mounted crooked as all motors have a pretty low "side load" value for shafts.
Having said all that, shafts bend almost always, very rare occasions of them braking.
This on the other hand seems it was put under to much stress when inserting the metal plates as it sheared clean off, so i would venture a guess that it was already cracked, can be seen by the discoloration, although might be from the low quality picture.

when i first built the machine my finishes looked like they were almost perfect and as time went on it settled into something i noticed and I messed around with for a while.

then i got sidetracked when i started thinking plasma machine and am just now coming back to deal with it

new motor is here already and am now working on getting that put on. i just thought it was interesting since i never seen this happen before. hopefully the new motor fixes everything. unplanned upgrade at this point

huge difference with surface finish with a less than perfect tool path and part for a machine this size.

Machinedude does his happy dance