All I was doing was sharpening a pencil, when suddenly the thing spontaneously disassembled!

OK, that isn't even slightly true. I did that on purpose. Our library's electric pencil sharpener started making some awful noises, almost a howling sound, as something inside was vibrating or grinding where it ought not. Option 1: place an order for a replacement through the library district. Option 2: take it apart and see if I could fix it first. As you can see, I chose option 2.

Step 1: unplug. This should go without saying, but apparently people don't always think ahead like that.

Step 2: disassembly. This model had two screws behind the shavings tray and two under the rubber "feet" on the bottom.

Step 2-A: I plugged it back in and bypassed the safety switch normally triggered by the shavings tray to see whether I could find the fault. Don't try this at home! I emerged unscathed, but also unenlightened.

Step 3: access the guts. I had to nudge some wire nuts past a protuberance in the shell, but otherwise, everything slid out easily.

Step 4: remove the motor. In this machine, two long, coarse-threaded screws held the motor in place.

This was as far as I could disassemble this mechanism. If I had the right tools, I could have removed the retaining rings holding the large gear in place, and then accessed the planetary gears that drive the sharpener itself, but without them, I was done at this point.

There was a nasty brown waxy grease all over everything. You can see some globs of it in the photo above. It almost resembled cosmoline, so now I want to splurge on a surplus rifle. I need a nice AKM... Back to the project, though.

Reassembly went fine. I had laid out the fasteners as I removed them, and it wasn't very complex in the first place. When I tested it again, the bad noise was gone. I don't think it'll last, but hey, I didn't make it worse, and for now, it's even better than it was!

And yes, the googly eyes are still there.