Help me out here. I thought I knew how a door interlock works and I suppose the PTC thermistor could overheat and cause a fire, but I can't see how the load of the main heating element influences it. Does anyone know what the actual mode of faliure is?
That perplexed me too.
Unlike a tumble dryer, which can end up full of lint and dry clothes and has a big heater plus a fan blowing the hot air around, a washing machine is full of wet stuff. It's unlikely to cause a serious fire, and indeed, according to the BBC, there have been none.
Graham. snipped-for-privacy@mail.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
They always have a ridiculous number of models in production. Modes for different retailers so that they can't be beaten on price, different countries, etc. Can this lead to them not being sufficiently focused on quality and reliability. Too much distraction.
I thought door locks tended to be mechanical - locked by a bimetal device with a heating element. Could that heater get too hot if in the proximity of a tub of hot water?
Often a wax motor.
Cheers
All down to C? standards. Much lower than the old BS standard. This is why the Grenfell fire started. Hopefully we can junk them now.
Some pix here.
"Some, about 20%, of the Hotpoint and Indesit washing machines sold since 2014 are affected by the fault. Up to 519,000 washing machines sold in the UK are involved. Seventy-nine fires are thought to have been caused by the fault which develops over time, according to Whirlpool, which owns the brands."
I don't know if it was one of these brands, but I know someone who had a washing machine fire. If they had been out of the house, or hadn't dragged the machine out of the kitchen door, they'd probably have lost the house.
Owain
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TV news had a shot of the door lock mechanism (square hole for the door latch to go through), showing a couple of wires going into it and burning of the plastic next to one.
Suggested workaround is to wash at 20C, suggesting the heater element isn't in circuit.
Perhaps they're putting the door lock in series with the heating element?
Looking at the interlocks on ebay, most of them have connectors rather than wire-terminals. This is from one of the affected models:
Theo
The DM article appears to show the connector is the problem:
Although I can't quite work out how they're exploding. Heater is presumably being jammed on leading to steam buildup. If the door switch fails short circuit, that would prevent the machine stopping when the door is opened, but I can't see how it would cause the heater to run for longer. Unless this is a separate problem?
Theo
Door interlock interrupts power to, among other things, the main heating element. So if it has deteriorating contacts, it will burn.
NT
It is the Daily Mail ...
Owain
Ditto with a mate of mine back in the late 1980's, an AEG washing machine, costing an arm and a leg and just a few months old decided to burst into flames just as they were going to bed. Fortunately it was unpluggable and a few buckets of water eventually put the flames out. Five minutes later and the whole kitchen would have been alight.
I wonder if it's more insidious than that, IIIRC there's some Ecobollox directive that says that appliances must not consume more than 0.5W when "off". Ours does this via the main (wash selector) switch turning off the SMPSU, maybe switching through the door switch is just a much cheaper way of doing it? I notice the door switch referred to in the pic claims to be rated at 16A...
Hopefully the socking great cost of the recall will focus Whirlpool's mind on better design in future.
Pamela snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news:XnsAB28EA4BF87645D4AM2@176.124.71.34:
Sounds like a relay is needed. (or electronic equivilant)
I doubt it. All electrical equipment comes with fire risks obviously, and the standards were quite good, just not quite good enough. I doubt they knew anything was amiss. Whirlpoo does not have a rep for top quality, safety etc, and there is far worse in the marketplace.
That costs. A marginally better switch is cheaper.
NT
I presume those photos are nothing to do with failing door interlocks, but failed bearings (or not detecting unbalanced loads) causing the drum to try to escape mid-spin?
They don't seem to have scaled their recall registration webserver properly, either
The whole thing sounds like a fiasco of major proportions to me. I can only guess that something in the construction of the door latch was not tested for fireproofness if that is a word, as, like you say the way the system works has been the same for many years. That is unless they re invented the well worse again in 2014. I can see some kind of interlock based on a circuit and a relay that fails connected, and hence overheats the relay, but surely relays that are designed for such uses must be tested to comply? Brian
I had a service suddenly catch fire some years ago, but it was not serious and self extinguished. Caused through dry joints sparking on a pcb and the lacquer used to protect it was what caught fire, but the pcb itself and everything around it were fire retardant, so although it made a crackling sound emitted a lot of pungent smoke it did not really do any damage to the room it was in. Of course it could not really be repaired since the original fault was mechanical which had overheated joints etc etc. Sometimes you have to just say its ready for the scrap heap. Brian
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