[bikestuff]

Gurus,

Many of us have Hunter Douglas electric blinds in our coaches.  These use Somfy motors to raise and lower the blinds.  On my coach, the shade in the front window is not made by HD but also uses a Somfy DC electric motor.  You can tell a Somfy motor by the yellow and black limit switches that are on one end of the shade.  (Yellow for Up, and Black for Down)

Today, I was messing with setting the limit switches on my front shade and one of them stuck.  (Aw shucks!).

I happened to have a couple of old motors, so I took one apart to see why it was binding.  First, I messed with my sacrificial motor and got one of the switches bound up (stuck in depressed position).

I tried prying on the sides of the switch.  I tried tapping on the switch.  I tried contact cleaner.  Nope.  Nothing worked.

Then I pressed extra hard on the switch and it bounced back.  It turns out that there is a kind of latching mechanism inside the switch.  Pressing extra hard released the latch and the switch returned to normal position.

   

I tried the technique on the front shade and it worked!  

I am posting in the hope of keeping someone from buying a new motor because they think they broke the limit switch.

Cheers,
bill