Schematics and wiring diagrams -- two different kinds of service documents that seem similar, but actually serve completely different purposes. One of them is essential to any electrical troubleshooting and should be consulted on every service call, while the other has much more niche applications. But which is which, and how do you tell them apart?
That's what we explore in this workshop, which is an excerpt of the discussion from one of our latest Live Dojo workshops. In it, we go through
Sometimes, manufacturers don't write out schematics as clearly as they should. In cases like this Frigidaire cooktop, the way that the relays for the simmer function are drawn is downright obtuse.
In our latest workshop webinar, we broke down the function of this circuit and really understand how it works, bringing our electrical and technical know-how to bear to make logical deductions about the circuit.
Did you miss the original webinar and want to watch this webinar recording? Click
How are we as techs supposed to understand the specifications we see on a split-phase motor's label? What's the difference between a motor's output power and its input power, and which of those specs is given on the label? What do acronyms like FLA and LRA mean? All that and more covered in this short video on motor specifications.
This is just a short excerpt from the great technical discussions we have every other Saturday during our Live Dojo Workshops. If you're not joining us for these
More and more folks are doing online training webinars these days -- so many, in fact, that it can be impossible to keep up with them all. Recently, Samsung and MSA both put out training webinars on Samsung dishwasher technology and troubleshooting, and I figured I would share the love with the Appliantology Brethren.
In the links below, you'll find my notes and screenshots from both webinars. Topics include:
Troubleshooting the OC/OE error
Identifying common sources of leaks
We had some fun in this Live Dojo Workshop! We went beyond the screen into the big, scary Real World and showed off live a few things about BLDC fan motors, including:
BLDC fan motor wire color conventions
Expected readings on PWM and RPM feedback lines
Simulating a PWM signal
Identifying failed speed sensor
...and more! Click below to watch the workshop recording -- viewable only by premium tech members.
If you're an Appliantology tech member and y
It should always be our goal to get our diagnosis with as little disassembly as possible using our schematic-reading know-how, but did you know that you can sometimes track down the problem without any disassembly at all?
That's just what the Samurai did for this Thermador gas range. Want to learn how he pulled off this magic trick? Watch the video below.
Want to watch the full recording? Click below -- viewable only by premium members.
You don't have to be a physicist or a mathematician to troubleshoot properly, but you can't get around the fact that math is the only way to really understand electricity. Sine waves are one such mathematical representation used for both voltage and current. But how does this representation work, exactly, and how does it help us wrap our head around voltage, current, and power?
That's what we'll break down for you in this excerpt from one of our many full-length technical webinar recordings
What do you do when a seemingly simple problem stumps you? Well, it's times like that when it's essential to have a structured troubleshooting strategy like the Samurai's Ten-Step Tango.
What is the Ten-Step Tango and how do you use it? That's exactly what we're going to teach you all about in this webinar recording, using a real-life example from here at Appliantology: an LG electric wall oven that won't heat. Strange as it may seem for such a simple problem, most techs would troubleshoot
When you're working on an appliance that's DOA (no lights, no response from the UI), your first troubleshooting priority is to identify where the power supply is missing.
Is it just the UI that's not getting power? Or is the main control board not getting power? Is there even power at the outlet it's plugged into?
These are the questions you need to answer before anything else, and you're going to answer these questions by taking measurements with your meter. However, there are right a
The temperature sensors used in ovens, which are devices called RTDs, don't vary too much between brands and models. There's something of an industry standard for RTD specs that you can generally rely on, even when you aren't given the specs explicitly.
However, Frigidaire has left a booby trap in the form of an RTD with unique specs in some of their ovens. What's more, this difference isn't even properly reflected in some of their tech sheets. They've got incorrect specs!
Want to know
We make a big hoopla here at Appliantology and Master Samurai Tech about Ohm's law: the set of simple formulas that describe the relationship between four key principles of electricity: volts, amps, ohms, and watts.
Friend of the site Aaron Wilson explains just how much of a game changer it is to understand this relationship in this short video:
So why exactly did Aaron find Ohm's law to be such a revelation? In what way did it help him see the code? To answer these questions
What are strip circuits and how do you read them? What purpose do they serve in troubleshooting? Are they better than normal schematics, worse, or just different?
That's what we explore in this workshop, which is an excerpt of the discussion from one of our latest Live Dojo workshops. Parallel to that, it also acts as something of a part 2 to our previous workshop on DC terminology. These schematics that we show have a number of esoteric and straight up confusing DC terminology, but don't w
In this interactive webinar workshop, we explored an LG gas dryer issue that had stumped an Appliantology tech. We performed a forensic analysis on the troubleshoot to figure out how it could have been improved, and then we moved on to thoroughly examine the circuits and understand how they work.
This and our dozens of other technical training webinar recordings are only viewable by premium tech members at Appliantology.
Topics covered include...
DC and AC loads
Compute
We had an interesting discussion at our most recent Live Dojo workshop! This dryer only runs when the push-to-start button is held down -- a relatively simple problem, but troubleshooting it requires us to understand the entire motor circuit and how it works on startup.
We began by using Ten-Step Tango to orient our troubleshooting, identifying our Load of Interest and analyzing its circuit.
This led us to examining how the start switch works, which includes some interesting components
Timer charts may be for old-skool appliances with mechanical timers, but there are still plenty of old-skool appliances knocking around, so reading timer charts remains a vital troubleshooting skill.
That's exactly what we cover in this workshop: how to cohere the timer chart and the schematic, reading them in tandem. Kind of like they're dance partners in the Timer Chart Cha-Cha!
Topics covered in this workshop include:
How to decipher the rows and columns on a timer chart
An interesting topic came up here in the Appliantology forums a little while back:
The tech was working on an electric dryer that was DOA -- no lights, no response to button presses. He put his multimeter to the LoZ setting (as you should always do when making AC voltage measurements!), and he started checking for the power supply to the appliance at the terminal block. Here's what he got:
L1 to N: 0 VAC
L2 to N: 120 VAC
L1 to L2: 20 VAC -- and while the meter leads are held
These aren't your grandma's ignition systems -- these are systems that use a DSI (Direct Spark Ignition) board, and that means you've got algorithms involved.
If you want to troubleshoot a DSI system, you need to understand this algorithm -- it's how the board thinks. Is the DSI board not sending any voltage to the electrodes? Well, it might just be in lockout mode after a failed ignition, meaning the problem lies elsewhere than the board. You can't troubleshoot a system if you don't know h
More than any other AC load, motors are all about amps.
What do I mean by that? When you have a motor that is misbehaving, the best, most informative electrical test you can do by far is amps. And one of the worst mistakes you could make is to just rely on ohms when testing a motor.
In this recording from one of our biweekly Live Dojo workshops, we go over several different aspects of troubleshooting motors.
Thermal controls are the first order of business. All AC motors have an i
Be warned: this week's troubleshooting scenario is somewhat chilling...
...or maybe not, since the problem is that the ice dispenser isn't working. In fact, the entire fridge shuts down when the ice dispenser is activated. How can this be? Well, in this recording from one of our biweekly Live Dojo workshops, we go over the relatively simple cause to this strange issue.
Loading down is the culprit here. That's when a faulty load grounds out the control board's DC power supply, causing a
You would think that there wouldn't be a lot going on with an oven's convection fan motor -- and you would be wrong! This Viking convection fan has a number of interesting elements in its circuit that we're going to explore in this post.
1. Is that a 240 VAC power supply for a fan motor? Turns out that you can actually run a fan on 240 VAC if you want to (and if the fan has the proper specs for it). There are even certain benefits to doing so.
2. Not just one, but two capacitors in the
One of the best things we can do to sharpen our skills as techs is to learn from other techs' experiences. There are a number of ways to do that, but the way that's both most convenient and lets you learn from the greatest variety of techs is searching the tech help forums here at Appliantology.
Appliantology has been on the web for 20 years now, and over that time the site has amassed a library of technical knowledge that is unmatched anywhere else. As a member of Appliantology, all of th
Take a look at the defrost circuit on this Whirlpool refrigerator:
Looks pretty standard -- there's just a defrost heater and a defrost terminator in the circuit, and voltage is supplied to the circuit by the control board.
But what is the purpose of the wire marked in green that tags off to J1-3?
If you look closely, you'll see that that pin on the control is labeled D-SENSE -- so that's a sensing line. This means that the purpose of that wire is to give the control board i
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