Re: (ET) E20 Foot Switch Lube

Hi Steve,

This has been an ongoing frustration for me and by the size of this post you can see I have spent some time trying to solve it!

I actually set up a complete mockup in my basement this winter and studied the mechanism and tried to see what happens. The vertical spring pushes on a piece of steel angle that is attached to the post of the actual beveled slide (as an aside, I have several spare foot pedals and I discovered GE made two different lengths of posts). The slide post has another small spring to maintain some compression against the actual switches, but not so much that it eliminates this post from being tilted upwards slightly under pressure from the large vertical spring (this compression of the post's small spring also affects the ability of the slide to move up and down freely. Unfortunately, this compression is arbitrarily determined simply by how far the push nut is installed onto the end of the slide post.) This eccentric action then "cants" the piece of steel angle and it "wedges" itself stuck. Sort of like an old drawer that gets pushed closed on one side only and it gets stuck from "canting" in the space provided.

On my E-20's I have seen remnants of previous owners' attempts at solving this "sticky" problem; external pull springs, or little welded curbs around the base of the vertical spring. Neither, in my opinion, addresses the core design flaw.

I am testing two solutions (one on each E-20) that I came up with. Both designed to minimize the post from being pushed eccentrically (thus keeping the steel angle from wedging).

Mike

From: SteveS <Stevesgroups verizon net>
To: Elec-trak <elec-trak cosmos phy tufts edu>
Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2013 2:14 PM
Subject: (ET) E20 Foot Switch Lube

Every now and then my E20 foot switch sticks just enough so it doesn't
come all the way back up. This makes it so it will not run again after
changing direction or depressing the brake unless I manually pull the
slider back up (pulling up on the foot pedal usually does not do it).
I've cleaned it and tried various lubes on it (forget what I tried last
time), but evidently I don't have it set up right. It's like the spring
isn't strong enough, but I suspect it is really misalignment or an error
in lubrication (too much, too little, wrong type).

Any words of wisdom?

Thanks,

SteveS

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