Man, do I hate Chinese goods. The motor I got for my shredder as a part of a kit from the maker of the shredder, but the motor itself was sourced from a reseller for the kit.

"Quality tools at half the price" is the reseller tagline and that apparently means "we do half of the work and it electrocutes you."

Seriously, the gang box that is supposed to have those little metal disks you knock out with a screwdriver and hammer were just stamped into the metal to look like punch outs. It was full-seal metal all the way around so I needed to cut a hole in it to pass wires through.

More critically though, the entire body of the shredder was charged up with wall voltages of 110V, so any time you touched it, it felt like you had little metal filings stuck in your fingers. That issue is traced back to a problem with one of the starter capacitors, so one of those are probably going to fail. (Or in my luck, outlast my natural lifespan to continue trying to shock me.)

I think I only noticed it because I built a wood stand for the shredder and put it on a wood table in the dry basement, so it is completely isolated from ground.

Suffice to say, we have a grounding wire attached to the shredder now and some copper pipe in the basement, so no more angry pixies dancing around the machine and putting tiny needles in your fingers when you touch it. It ain't right, but it's better than having 110V sizzling off of it whenever it's plugged in until I get a new capacitor.