Hacking a Samsung Washer!

[itsmoked]

So I'm sitting in the kitchen near our back laundry/pantry and our Samsung front loader makes a 'new sound'. Investigating the display has a message stating that it didn't pump out after the initial wash.

That suxxx. I see my day getting more complicated all of a sudden. We do about a load a day of something so having a dead washer is considerably life complicating.

Priorities re-arranged I unstack the dryer off the washer, pull the washer out and turn it 90 degrees and remove the back to reach the pump because it's got to be clogged, right? I drain the hose by running it out the back door and down the stairs. Pull the pump and open it up to see... it's spotless. Dang!

Out with the DMM I plug it into the connector and tell the washer Drain/and/Spin while looking for 120Vac at the connector. Nada. I'm getting the picture now. OFF with its head! Er top.

Controller in hand this is what it looks like:

GACK!! The board is completely conformally coated with clear polyurethane. Completely impossible to remove it from the carrier as cutting around it won't release the entire back of the board from it.

Notice the row of suspicious relays? One is labeled Drain Pump... The suspect.

Off to the web for a replacement. $250 and daaaaaays to get it. This won't do. My son looks at it and laments, "Too bad you can't get to it from the top of the board." Well, that almost sounded like a dare.

Thinking about that..

So, I take it to my office/lab/shop and pin the sucker to the deck of my mill and chuck up an 1/8" end mill.

I start taking cuts across the relay shearing its top off.

And more:

More yet until I can see the gooey insides:

Not enough though as I have to understand and get to the two coil wires and the two contacts somehow.

So much for that solenoid!! Take that you worthless cur!

I finally reach my targets. MWAHhahahaha

The two green arrows denote the low voltage coil pins (12VDC). The red arrows show the two normally OPEN contacts.

Now I need a replacement. Digging about the office I came across a nice little Solid State Relay rated an amp or two higher than the clapped-out mechanical relay.

Time to solder in the bypass organ. YeAH! I get to use honest-to-goodness Pb solder with wicked "44" rosin core for a change. Yikes, the PVC jackets sure don't like 700 degrees much.

I decided I needed some strain relief and pressed the neighbors into doing it.

Problem! The SSRelay is polarized unlike it's late mechanical predecessor.
So I dug around some more and came up with pin receptacles I could solder onto wires and would plug onto the SSR pins with gold contacts and good mechanical grip. This would allow me to re-assemble the whole pile and fire it up while figuring out what the coil drive polarity was. Then, simply plugging the wires onto the relay with the correct polarity. I double sticky taped the relay in.

Worked out pretty well. I did some math and figured that relay had cycled about 80,000 times before it croaked. It's rated for about 125K cycles but the pump is inductive so I guess I got a reasonable lifetime out of it. However this OPTO 22 SSR is going to have a boatload of cycles before it fails. I doubt it will ever fail.

Mission accomplished, same day, back on laundry track.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[TheTick]

but.. but... but... THE WARRANTY!!!

 

[LittleInch]

Great post - I've never got that far into hacking a circuit board with relays, but I did something similar to a simple board which burnt out for the extractor fan 3 speed board. had to keep bypassing certain switches until finally had to buy a new one, but even then it wasn't identical so had to "adapt" it. Worked when we sold the house....

80,000 cycles! At say 5 pumps outs per cycle ( one a the start, end of wash cycles, three rinse and spins) and once per day is 43 years ?? even if you think of on and off as two cycles, that's still 20+ years

Your grey wires seen to have suffered a bit of collateral damage though....

sincerely hope it doesn't burst into flames and burns your house down


Remember - More details = better answers
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[fattdad]

Not sure if you want to click on this link, but these washers are quite impressive!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq6T5BojXc8

f-d

ípapß gordo ainÆt no madre flaca!

 

[dgallup]

That link is more bizarre than the YouTube link my sister sent me of a cat in a shark costume riding a roomba. And then you see there are lots more of each. Some people have waaaay to much time on their hands.

Good job itsmoked on repairing something with "no user serviceable parts inside". I hate it when the manufactures want to sell us a $250 module when all it needs is a 10 cent resistor or in this case a $2 relay.

----------------------------------------

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

 

[btrueblood]

Kudos to Samsung for potting the relays in something mostly waterproof...and shame on them for making the entire rack of relays replacement-resistant (we can't say replacement-proof now that itsmoked has shown us the light!)

 

[ScottyUK]

Keith, this has really made me smile. I did something similar with my parents' Bosch dishwasher a few years ago. The power button, which was almost rated for the machine's power consumption, died a molten death. Having bought a new switch at a grossly inflated price, the new switch was re-purposed to control the coil of a contactor I added to handle the heavy switching. No more failures!

 

[itsmoked]

Your grey wires seen to have suffered a bit of collateral damage

Yes, as mentioned. I can't see how it matters since the wires cannot move anyway. The original contacts had no insulation either they don't seem to burn down houses frequently. Not sure how a bunch of metal is going to burn anyway via a fused controller.

As for the 80k cycles:
The washer is 8 years old. That's 10k pump cycles a year. Ten loads a week(two households). The pump cycles about 20 times a wash, don't ask me why. You'll find that's more than 80k.


fattdad; I loved that video!! Great stuff there. I did the same thing with a top loader washer that was actually a front-loader that they designed to have a front and rear bearing. You had to load it from the top thru a hatch that opened one of the hex faces of the basket to load/unload the washer. That worked great but there were a dozen other failures to the design. My daughter and I loaded it with a couple of cinder blocks and put it on spin. Then ran it with a loooog extension cord. It was really loud and flipped over after a few seconds. Great sport!

dgallup; Thanks! Yeah, washers and dryers... Had a washer that blew its timer, you know, the crazy rats maze of a drum switch type. Bought a new one for $130 put it in and had it die in a few weeks. I ripped it all out and replaced it with a floppy based PC and an opto board. Wrote all my own wash profiles in BASIC. Vastly better than the O.E.M. controller recipes. Only catch was you had to remember to start booting the computer before loading the clothes so you didn't have to wait for the BIOS and DOS to get there. Pitched that washer 4 years later when the main bearing choked.


btrueblood; It's basically well thought out and works very well. They actually don't look like they skimped on anything like I've seen in other washers and dryers. I wish they'd just used a better relay for this one really high cycle function. No other function cycles even an 8th as much.

Atta boy Scotty! I've had to do the same switch => switch/relay mod several times. I just got a 3D printer. Spent 20+ hours assembling it. All pleased. Powered it up ran some tests and when I tried to turn it off the power switch had welded ON. FIRST USE!! They had a 5A switch feeding a 250W switcher with what, a 30A inrush? Sheesh.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[LittleInch]

itsmoked,

It was a somewhat tongue in cheek comment, but 8 years old at once a day is pretty good for any domestic machine nowadays - normally its the mechanicals that wear out first, but I do congratulate you on a most excellent repair, and story to go with it - the quote of the day being "so having a dead washer is considerably life complicating." Great turn of phrase.

I did a similar thing years ago when the car starter solenoid wouldn't pull in when it got hot. I got very good at finding slopes to park on so I could jump start it, but very inconvenient - gradually too many losses through the connectors, key switch etc so it would click, but not pull in the main starter solenoid (but only when it was hot!). Finally fixed it by adding a fused relay into the starter circuit so the key still operated it, but drew a 1/10th of the current which then went via the relay.

I do worry now that our generation of "fixers" isn't being replaced, but I guess that's what the manufacturers call profit....

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[btrueblood]

Nope, no worries LI. Came home yesterday to find one of the boys had pulled apart his game controller and was busily cleaning various switch contacts. He even asked if it was ok if he sanded down the point of one of my phillips screwdrivers to better fit the JIS cross point screw he needed to remove. Asked. In advance of the act[. I'm still a bit dizzy.

 

[ScottyUK]

I think it's true that young 'uns today are less adept at fixing stuff, possibly because so much of it is simply not fixable. I hope my kids are able to learn a few things from me before I toddle off this mortal coil.

One of my curveball questions when interviewing is to ask the victim candidate to explain in basic terms how an engine works - it could be a steam-powered beam engine, or diesel, petrol or a gas or steam turbine depending on my mood. Sometimes the response is deer-in-headlights followed by "B-b-but I thought this was an electrical interview...?" and sometimes they just go straight for it. It helps separate the can-do folks from the bluffers and blaggers.

 

[GregLocock]

Unlike Keith's excellent adventure I got suckered into trying to follow the diagnostics for my Fisher Paykel (or was it technik) dishwasher. Following the blinking LED diagnostics, first i replaced the speed sensor ($44), then i replaced the motor hub ($127), then it said replace the main board ($250ish) and I said sod this for a game of toy soldiers and called the man in (%900 for a replacement unit). Every component looked as though it had been attacked by 10 years of steamy alkaline liquid, mainly because it had.

Mind you I did fix our oven with a jumper lead, I'm still pleased with that one.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[Ron]

Keith....you Sparkies have balls!

 

[SLTA]

I've got pretty much the same washer, and mine started making that same noise at me. I fixed it by kicking the washer and then turning it off and on. No more troubles! (And there, friends, is the difference between an electrical and a structural. Keith's is way more elegant - mine is brute force.)

Please remember: we're not all guys!

 

[KENAT]

Samsung, any concerns about it bursting into flames?

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[itsmoked]

They sure don't build their Nexus 7s like their wash machines...

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[VEBill]

"... their Nexus 7s..."

Did you mean 'Note 7' ?

Nexus is the Google brand. The Nexus 7 is their line of 7-inch Android tablets.

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is the recent famously on fire model.

 

[itsmoked]

Ah, you're right VE1BLL! I got those mixed up. Thanks for clearing that up.



Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[VEBill]

Keith. Good that your Samsung washer is Front Loading.

Samsung's got another billion dollar recall on their hands. This time 2.8M Top Loading washers.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/samsung-washing-machine-recall-1.3837239

 

[itsmoked]

Yikes!

It really seems like these companies have real monkeys designing stuff. The HMIs are absolutely moronic! Designed by people who've NEVER used that kind of appliance, as fundamental function is just flat wrong. Same with the this top loader recall. How could they NOT have tested for this? How is there no out-of-balance sensing to stop things before the structure is coming apart?

I have a buddy who bought one of those obscenely expensive Samsung refrigerators with a temp controlled drawer between the refer and the drawer freezer. The temp control failed about 4 months in. Turns out they have only a 90 day warranty on the electrical boards in a two thousand dollar refrigerator!

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com