emr8989

I got a eBay refurbished one of these, and discovered it has a serious design flaw that will result in plastic melting in the brush head motor, a strong burning plastic smell and ultimately the brush head failing. The brush head has a peg that is attached to the motor and the brushes are mounted on the peg. The peg is not flush with the plastic covering the encased ball bearings of the motor, so what happens is fur gets tangled in the space between the peg and the plastic wall, the fur heats up due to friction, and the plastic wall starts to melt away. I can clearly see this after unscrewing and removing the brushes and the peg. On one side of the motor (the side with the smaller brush) the plastic wall only has a hole about ½ in diameter which the motor/peg connection protrudes though, which is expected. On the other side of the motor, the plastic wall has melted away such that the hole is now over an inch in diameter. That hole was also full of brown fur mixed with melted plastic, extremely difficult to clean out, and when I did clean it out exposed even more of the metal ball bearing wall.

There are a few videos on YouTube demonstrating this issue. If you don’t clean out the fur after every vacuuming, which is a difficult task because you have to unscrew 5 - 6 Torx T10 screws, then even the metal ball bearing wall will wear down due to the friction, exposing and ruining the ball bearings and inevitably destroying the motor. Plus, the smell of both the burning plastic and even the smell of the plastic/fur particles when you clean it is significantly toxic.