Flex pe-14 broke!!!

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kjimpressions

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Ok so i obviously have the new flex. heres the problem. when i went to push the stop button in to take off the backing plate, it became jammed. i did not notice that it became jammed and ended up pulling the trigger and heard alot of grinding.

So now i have taken apart the entire machine and i found what broke. There are 3 small plastic gears inside a piece located behind the head piece with the spindle attached to it. when the brake jammed and i pulled on the trigger the metal gears that spin the plastic gears shredded the plastic gears.

now i wonder if i can get a replacement gearbox type thing for the flex pe-14. also i was wondering if this happened to anyone else. and if so did you get it fixed or just buy a different machine. for the $400, i dont think it should have plastic gears mixed with metal gears. it seems setup for failure.

thanks
 
If you purchased it through us within the last 30 days, give me a call in the morning.

1-800-869-3011 ext 215

If it has been longer than 30 days, contact Flex North America. They are very helpful and will get your machine repaired in a timely manner.

1-877-331-6103

Contact Information - Flex North America, Inc.
 
Bummer. Sorry to hear that your machine broke like that.

Thanks for posting this though so the rest of us PE 14-2 150 owners can be careful to not make the same mistake. I am usually concerned about plastic gears in things such as drills or fastener driving type tools where a lot of torque is seen frequently. If these little gears are made of the same plastic that is used on the Flex 3401 I wouldn't be too concerned about them wearing prematurely.

Thanks to your misfortune though, we do know that they can indeed break and how to break them or better yet how not to break them.

Again, sorry for your misfortune and thanks for posting.
 
It's strange that the spindle lock got jammed.
Sorry to hear this but believe the manufacturer (or seller) will offer replacement.
 
Odd to hear but then again they have to balance weight and cost and heaven knows that we would rather them make a part that is easy to replace be the one that fails and does not destroy the machine or your arm/car in the process.

The nice thing about a quality product and company is that they will stand behind it and get you up and running in no time.
 
I have done a little looking around and it appears that those gears are not something that is offered at the place where Flex's website recommends that you buy parts from. They are certainly on the parts breakdown but the part numbers are not on the listing of available parts. That concerns me a bit.

When I first started detailing, I purchased a Cyclo polisher because they offer every part that is in the machine that is built now and they also have the parts for the 50 year old Cyclos. That impresses me about a tool company.

I bought the Flex PE 14-2 150 because it is pretty and I was impressed with the build quality of the 3401, I never did look at the parts availability like I normally would. I'll just keep my fingers crossed and go easy when I install the backing plate to the machine. At my day job they call me "Crimedy Grip" because I always over tighten stuff. I may end up in trouble with this polisher.
 
kjimpressions said:
for the $400, i dont think it should have plastic gears mixed with metal gears. it seems setup for failure.

thanks
Click to expand...

It's an engineering decision. If they used all metal components for the spindle lock, imagine what would have happened if you had jammed that one? You may have chipped a main gear. That, or they would have to way over-design the main gears so that they could overpower the spindle lock in case of a jam, making the polisher more expensive and heavy.

Plastic gears allow lightly loaded components to selectively fail when something goes wrong. I have not seen this part on a PE-14, but it should be an easy fix as that seems to be what was designed to happen.

Quick aside: There are some engineering plastics that make cheap steel look bad, so plastic is not always a bad thing.
 
thanks everyone for replying. i will call flex tomorrow to try to get this solved. it seems as if the the spring on the emergency stop that makes the button pop back up got pushed in crooked which caused it to get jammed.

hopefully flex can figure something out so this doesn't happen again or offer some kind of replacement piece so i can fix it.

i know that sometimes plastic is good to have in gears but at the same time, they are spinning pretty quick. i mean the machine does get up to 2100 rpm, to me that seems like it would be very easy to screw them up with parts moving at such a high speed.
 
kjimpressions said:
thanks everyone for replying. i will call flex tomorrow to try to get this solved. it seems as if the the spring on the emergency stop that makes the button pop back up got pushed in crooked which caused it to get jammed.

hopefully flex can figure something out so this doesn't happen again or offer some kind of replacement piece so i can fix it.

i know that sometimes plastic is good to have in gears but at the same time, they are spinning pretty quick. i mean the machine does get up to 2100 rpm, to me that seems like it would be very easy to screw them up with parts moving at such a high speed.
Click to expand...




Why would you fix it as its new and under warranty.

I would ask them for a brand new unit.


:props:
 
aerogt01 has it right. It is a design feature in that will act like a "shear" pin would to not implode and cause a catastrophic failure of your flex. It is well thought out..and I think it is just a design feature that unfortunately happened when the lock jammed.
 
i bought the flex when it first cam out last February or so, so im sure the warranty is no good.

i understand that the gears are supposed to fail to prevent further damage but maybe they should give you extra gears when you buy the machine. just a thought
 
In normal use, you'd never need the extra gears and that's a waste of their money.
 
Why did you even tried to take it apart? You may have just voided the warranty.

Pat
 
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