X-ACTO Powerhouse 1799 Electric Pencil Sharpener Black

Very Poor Quality & Post Sales Support

I have two of these units. Both failed and one in two seconds. Why?

The X-acto website reads this unit can be used with composite pencils (plastic). Many children get composi...Read complete review

I have two of these units. Both failed and one in two seconds. Why?

The X-acto website reads this unit can be used with composite pencils (plastic). Many children get composite pencils at parties so they are quite common at home and in school. Its hard to tell a composite pencil from a wooden one until it's sharpened. Hence the problem.

A composite pencil will strip the plastic gears inside this sharpener in just a few seconds. It works quite well with wooden pencils but composites are the kiss of death. One unit stripped in just two seconds on a composite pencil!!!

I disassembled both units. The gears inside are cheap plastic vs metal. For the engineers reading along, the fitment of the gears is quite loose. The worm gear on the motor and the opposing ring gear only engage half the gears' depth. That over stresses the tips of the cheap plastic teeth and the worm gear strips the ring gear rendering the unit inoperable.

The unit comes with a two year warranty if you manage to keep up with the receipt. That's reasonable but we all know many of us don't manage receipts well. If you don't, you're screwed since you can't buy parts and there's no for fee service center.

This is a VERY simple unit to repair and plastic gears only cost a few cents to make. The problem is X-acto doesn't offer any repair parts for these units. You can fix it in 10-20 minutes but you can't get parts. Consequently , you have to throw it away.

Beyond the gears, how bad is the lack of replacement parts support? The dump tray has a little post on the back that goes through a small hole to trip a safety switch. This prevents the unit from operating when someone could get injured. The tray is brittle plastic so if a child drops it on the ground in a classroom or when dumping the shavings from the dump tray, the probability is high that this post will break off. The unit is repaired by simply replacing the plastic dump tray with a new one. However, you guessed it, you can't get the part. So once again you throw the unit away.

I don't know how a teacher would police the unit well enough to keep it operational given the constraints (no composite pencils; fragile dump tray). I'd recommend buying a heavy duty crank unit over this one. If you're sure only wooden pencils will be used, this unit will serve you well.

Hope it helps somebody.