itsmoked
Electrical
- Feb 18, 2005
- 19,114
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 -
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 -
