How I Repaired My Craftsman Drill Motor Not Working

Craftsman Drill Motor Not Working
Craftsman Drill Motor Not Working

The Craftsman drill is one of the best drill that I have ever owned, they have the perfect torque and power to drill and screw everything in its place and have helped me with so many of my projects.

Last week I got into a little panic situation when my Craftsman drill bailed on me while I was working on a really important client project.

Here is what I did to quickly troubleshoot it and bring it back to life to continue with my project without any problems.

But before you continue reading this article, you may watch first the short video I made about this topic. You can watch the video below.

On the video, I showed how you could fix this issue by opening your Craftsman drill and inspecting its different parts like the board, motor, forward/reverse button and trigger button.

Read: Change Chuck on the Craftsman Drill: Detailed Instructions

Quick Ways to Troubleshoot Craftsman Drill Motor Not Working

Follow these four methods to fix your Craftsman not working or if you are confused as to why it is not working.

First of all I quickly grabbed my gloves and put them on. It is very important to be safe while working with power tools as they can store some current even when detached from the battery.

Remove the cover of the craftsman drill

Then I opened the 6 screws that held all the components and electronics of the Craftsman drill in a safe shell and removed it, this helped me disassemble the drill and access its components easily.

On the very first look I tried looking for any burn marks on the motor or the board itself but as I inspected it I couldn’t find any so I resorted to other methods.

One thing that was on the top of my mind was the faulty forward/reverse switch, it’s the switch that controls the drive of the drill to forward or reverse.

forwardreverse switch

If this switch is broken or faulty it might not move from the outside and prevent the drill from moving.

I tried manually moving it from left to right position to see if the drill worked or not but surprisingly my drill worked fine meaning it had no problems.

The trigger button which is responsible for sending the power to the motor could also be the problem so I begin inspecting it using my multimeter.

The trigger button

When pressed, the trigger should send 18V to 20V to the motor, if nothing is detected your trigger might be faulty or the board itself needs to be replaced as the trigger does not receive the current directly from the battery.

During my testing using the multimeter a stable 19V current was being sent to the motor and the motor worked perfectly clearing doubts of if the trigger button was faulty.

Now it was time to check the motor itself as all the other things seemed to have worked perfectly.

I started by connecting the motor directly to the battery using the jumper wire cables

I started by connecting the motor directly to the battery using the jumper wire cables, which is not a good idea and I don’t recommend using it was short on tools as I was not in my usual place.

Make sure that you are using gloves before carrying out this method. When I connected the motor directly to the battery while the board was still connected I expected the motor to move, but it did not.

The motor remained silent and I was left questioning what was the main cause of my Craftsman drill motor not working until I removed the battery from the board and connected it to the external battery once again.

I connected the battery directly the motor without board

After I connected the battery directly the motor started moving once again concluding my troubleshooting process and the board turned out to be the real problem.

The board was not sending proper power to the motor and the motor was not moving making it useless, I decided to replace the board instead but if your motor still does not move after directly connecting it to the external battery it is due to faulty motor and it needs to be replaced to fix the issue.

Author

  • Thomas Martinez

    Hi, I am Thomas Martinez, the owner of ToolCroze.com! As a passionate DIY enthusiast and a firm believer in the power of quality tools, I created this platform to share my knowledge and experiences with fellow craftsmen and handywomen alike.

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