Anyone made their own carbon brushes? (Plus scam alert)

[Lard]

Hi all,
Mate of mine has a Milwaukee 18v mitre saw (M18 SMS216 - worth about £500) and asked me to take a look at it.....simple repair (or so I thought) as the carbon brushes need replacing.

Went online and, long story short, ordered them from Mrcarbonbrush.com as they were the cheapest. Turns out I've not received them and had no response from an email I sent back to them and out of the 4 tel numbers I managed to locate, the 2 landlines were unobtainable and both mob numbers were answered but said I had the wrong number etc.

Subsequently went back online and then found trustpilot reviews that reflected my situation ie looks like it's a scam website......so please beware if you're looking for brushes!......that's my first point over.

Anyway, went back to web to look for brushes and ended up ringing an Irish company who confirmed that EACH brush is around £40 (so £80 for set) and that, in their experience, this particular set is the most expensive they've come across......so it got me thinking about whether or not it would be possible to make your own? Can't, surely, be that hard?

Watched a YT vid which reinforced this initial belief until I read one comment about the material content of the actual carbon block.....something about copper carbon???

So thought I'd throw it out to you lot? Any thoughts please?

 

[Spectric]

Can you not buy the original brushes as a set ?

With high current devices they do use a percentage of copper in the brushes, common in commercial starter motors and due to the low voltage high current application. With a corded device running at even 110 volts the current is much lower and so carbon brushes can be used.

 

[Amplidyne]

As far as I understand it, brushes some not only in a lot of sizes, but also in a variety of compounds, which makes them harder or softer.
You need the right ones for the job. One's the right size will fit, but may not last long, or may damage the comm.
So get the originals as replacements if you can is my advice.
I don't really know specifics, but we had a lot of rotating DC machines with brushes where I worked at one time. They are different compounds, and the brush tension (the amount of spring tension on them) is also important.

 

[Sideways]

I've done it once.
For some no name cheap powertool - can't remember what - that came out of a supermarket or DIY shed.
There was no chance of a proper spare so I just found something similar and oversize, then filed it down. It worked. On common powertools it's hard to imagine that there will be much difference in the graphite used from one to another so I wouldn't worry about it.

If it's your prized Festool, Fein, or whatever, then the shouldn't be a problem getting original parts, or brushes from other machines in the range made to similar standards.