Dakota Pro Chatter

Find a good machine shop in your area and pay them to make it work right. It will probably save you some headache and time. Yeh it's going to cost you a hundy or so.

 

Superdave
What you have is run-out in your blade set-up. You can adjust runout out of your blade by using an indicator with a fine scale on it. I work in a machine shop and deal with this stuff most every day. If you don't have access to this type of equipment you may be out of luck. Believe it or not, where the blade mounts over the arbor there is enough slop per say in that fit to give you runout in your outside diameter of the blade itself. Not likely there is anything wrong with the arbor, nothing there really except bearing that rotate around a center shaft. Just a rod for an axle of sorts. Its possible that someone ground some runout in your blade if youve had them resharpened. You may try indexing your bolt pattern one hole at a time to see if it gets any better. as a last resort! Hope this helps, Steve

 

If the maker can't fix it there's a problem, (with the maker) they have to have arbors, how else could they make another machine? Steve is right, somebody didn't indicate something in when they made the original part, it can happen, but if they have a bad part they should fix it for you, no reason you should eat the cost of repair. I know you bought it when it was Van Dykes, but I'd give McKenzie a call and talk to them now, I'm guessing they'll make it right.

 

They probablly dont have any replacement arbors, because an arbor isnt considered a "wearable part", and is the most expensive part of the machine.

You stated you have had the machine for close to 5 years, and started have problems over the last 2 years. Like Steve said, I dont think its the arbor either. They dont just go bad one day.

I will bet you a quart of anything I carry, that if you change the pulley on the motor, your problem will be solved. : It could also be the motor shaft, but I will stick with my first guess. If it is the pulley, your gonna need to put new bearing in the arbor again, because a bad pully wears out bearings REAL FAST!

 

Dakota Pro again....? Find a company who answers their phones, returns calls, backs their machine up with a "LIFETIME WARRANTY"....YES....LIFETIME WARRANTY, even on the arbor. Then you will still have your hair and no headaches. Just a thought....darla

Hope you post when you find out what the problem is.....the pulley, the arbor, the bearings, the blade runout, the mounts.....

SORRY I know I can even sense the sarcasim (sp?) in this,,,,,,I'm just very passionate and now so excited about the up dates...even better.....

Customer Service and Quality go a long way!!!!!!!!!!!!

Go USA...................

 

If the arbor is off, which I'm pretty sure it is, it was made that way, and even though it's been five years you shouldn't have any expense in fixing it. The machine work on the arbor isn't going to change over time unless it's made of really soft material and you get wear on the shoulder. I'm not sure how that one is set up, but if it's a single rigid bearing a bad pulley could cause a problem after it ruined the bearing, if it's two bearings a bad pulley isn't going to do anything but cause vibration and noise, even bad bearings won't give you enough run out to be noticeable on your cut. there is a possibility that you have been getting a bunch of bad grinds on your blades, but you'd think even the worst grinder would get one good one out of six!

 

hmmmm.....not the blades then!

 

Wow Hudson, that's scary! Are the bearing housings really so flimsy you can distort them with a little set screw!?

 

Go Hudson....Yessssss MADE IN THE USA.......and GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR wouldn't it be nice to have it delivered (not damaged) open it up, mount it and let er run and run and run and run and run andNOOOO problems..... and if by chance something does go wrong we could just call and know its guarenteed and you can talk to the people who built it, not production quality but made with pride. Hope you get your situation handled with communication and no fees and Happy Fleshing there after.............

 

Ive had a chatter problem with mine {floor model} since day one. Ive done some tinkering with it that's helped, but it's still got a slight wobble. Also had to get a replacement motor after 3 months of use when the start relay switch went bad. Van Dykes/Mckenzie quickly sent out a replacement no ?'s asked at no charge.

 

Phil, I just talked to Darla and she said that a local tannery in MI that worked with S&S has some of the new design machines and they are working great. I also talked to the tannery yesterday and they said the same thing. I think S&S now has a tannery viable fleshing machine. You ready to try one out?
I have to say, I am using an S&S machine and I really like it. It's not the new design so I can't vouch for that, but the prior design is a nice machine.

OH, not chatter, other that customer's coming in to chat''''ter. lol