Washer PCB repairs

[Daniallo]

Anyone know a good firm that can do this? Have found one on ebay - £45, & another locally, just wondered if anyone had used one they can recommend.

Cheers

CD

[fred]

In article , Daniallo writes

Assuming you mean washing machine controls:

[Daniallo]

price to the ebay firm. My missus was reluctant to go there when I gave her the directions I got from them - "The only house on the Oxton bypass, go to the black gate & honk your horn, we're in the barn". It looks quite a plush barn on google, complete with tennis court.

[fred]

Yes, used them after a recommendation from a w/m repairer on diynot.

Fast friendly service plus useful help sheet supplied with the product to help you fix the fault. They'll take the board back for a nominal restocking fee if it doesn't fix your problem which is exceptional in my view.

Boards are supplied exchange so they will be refurbs.

[Daniallo]

Picked up board from them today, it's a fantasically low tech but efficient operation, a room in a barn full of circuit boards, with someone busily soldering them. Sadly it didn't fix the fault but the guy is happy to take back less the £9 fee. It did suggest it may be a motor problem, so I'll explore that avenue. After the pump, motor & board I'm guessing there's not a lot else to go wrong? I can afford to buy a new washer, but am loathe to do so.

CD

[fred]

Thanks for the feedback on them. I'm not surprised to hear they are a cottage/barn setup but am happy to support such outfits if they have the knowledge and have invested in test gear and a stock of exchange modules which it appears they have. Power to 'em.

Sorry to hear it hasn't solved your problem. If you think it is the motor maybe take it out and have a look at brushes and the commutator.

I assume you've already searched for refs to repair on your model make and number? As I said, I found good info on the diynot.com site and you can search that specific (or other site) using the 'site:' term in google eg. search 'hotpoint site:diynot.com' no quotes.

HTH

[Daniallo]

Since my last post I've got a thread going on diynot & UKwhitegoods, the latter giving excellent feedback, I've removed the motor & the brushes have been confirmed as fine after posting pics on UKwhitegoods. The finger of blame is pointing to the wiring harness which can chafe on the drum, this seems to make sense to me as the machine won't get to the proper 'warp speed' part of the spin cycle where it falls over. Looking at the number of wires to the motor I guess voltage is sent to different ones telling the motor what it needs to be doing? I shall do further dismantling later.

CD

[Andrew Gabriel]

Some washing machine motors, particularly the high spin speed ones, have a separate field winding for the top spin speed than is used for everything else. It sounds like the connection to that may have broken. I had the opposite - the connection to that was fine but the connection to the standard field winding broke in the wiring loom just where the wire when into the connector, so when my machine tried to spin, when it was working up to 1200 RPM, it only got to about 200 RPM, and then when it switched to 1400 RPM using the other field winding, the whole machine near took off due to going from

200 RPM to 1400 RPM in about 1 second. Eventually, it didn't even manage the 200 RPM, and then the microprocessor detected there was a fault and abandoned the programme.

So the connections you might find on a washing machine motor are:

A pair of wires for the armature via the brushes. A pair of wires for the field coil. Possibly a second pair of wires for a second field coil. Possibly a pair of wires from a tacho feedback unit, if the controller monitors the motor speed.

May also be an earth, and one side of some of the pairs above may be commoned up (although they can't be in all cases, as that would prevent reversing motor direction).

Might also be some sort of suppression on the brush connections, and thermal trip on the field coil.

Never rum a washing machine motor off-load, as some can spin fast enough to self-destruct, explosively.

[Daniallo]

Thanks to the excellent advice on ukwhitegoods the fault was traced to the pressure switch. I watched the washer do it's cycle & noticed it got stuck pumping endlessly at the end of the was cycle, thinking something wasn't being sensed (I had no idea what a pressure switch was at this point) I whacked the side of the washer & it continued it's cycle.

When I remoced the pressure switch to check it, a wire came clean off it's connector, this was reattached & all is well.

I am now an expert on washing machines, they really are quite simple with most things easy to replace.

CD

[Daniallo]

When I went to EMW to get my board they were doing just this!

[fred]

In article , Daniallo writes

Glad you got it sorted and thanks for feeding back.