Tool Maintenance Using an Inspection Camera

Tool maintenance, and sometimes when you have a problem, tool diagnostics are an important part of keeping your shop safe and keeping everything working just right. Now, sometimes the problem you run into is that you want to know what's going on with a tool but you really need to be able to look down inside it. That's where inspection cameras like this can really help you out. What I have here is a device who's really what it's designed for is to allow you to put this probe down into a wall cavity. You could have a look at electrical wiring. You could have a look at plumbing, any place where you can't get to you could get that tiny probe. What's happening here is that on this end of the tool there's a monitor here that allows me to look at this and see whatever the camera over here is seeing. There's also a light that's here on the end of the probe. So I can use that to shed some light on my subject. With the wire, I can output this. So in this case, I'm outputting it to my laptop. That's going to give me a bigger image, make it a little bit easier to see what's going on. So in the case of this table saw, when I raised and lowered the blade that got just a little bit tight on me. It feels like it's working kind of hard. So what I want to do is get underneath here and have a look and see if I can figure out what's going on. And I'll say that, you know maybe the hardest part of this whole thing it's kind of like patting your head and rubbing your belly. You're got to teach your hands to manipulate the end of the probe to get it where you want it to go. Now right there is the lead screw that controls the height adjustment, and then just there at the tail end of it are the gears that work with that lead screw. And let me get in `just the right spot here. And look at those gears and how clogged up with schmutz they are. They're covered with sawdust. Somebody, that would be me, hasn't been doing a good job of getting up inside the saw here and cleaning those babies out. So what this inspection camera has allowed me to do is get up inside the tool very easily, see what the problem is, see what I need to do to straighten it out. Great way to do those kind of diagnostics. Now I've also got tips that I can put on the end of the probe. So I can put a magnet on there. I can put a hook on there. Who hasn't dropped an Arbor nut or something else down inside a tool. So those are going to help you retrieve stuff like that. There's also a mirror here that lets you get into even tighter spots and see what's going on. Imagine too, you're working on a car. How many times have you wondered, what does it look like down on the other side of that engine? Something like this would let you have a look inside there. So, in addition to their kind of typical home improvement DIY applications, inspection cameras like this are really handy for letting you have a look inside the guts of a tool to make sure that everything is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.