Here's something for you sharp Appliantology techs to puzzle over: what in the world is the circled symbol on this schematic?
Is that a wiring harness? Maybe this diagram's strange way of showing a splice?
To figure out what it is, we've got to have a functional understanding of how Electrolux likes to design their water valve circuits. Let's look at a similar configuration that's drawn differently.
There we have it -- on this schematic, the engineers decided to throw
When it comes to troubleshooting BLDC motors and inverters, there's usually a standard strategy. You check the input to the inverter (a good 120 VAC power supply and a PWM signal from the main control) and you make sure the motor windings are in spec and all the same resistance. But what about measuring the output of the inverter?
This is certainly possible to do, and it can be a useful measurement, especially in hairier inverter troubleshooting scenarios. But before we get into that, let's
Want to really put your technical know-how to the test? Well, have we got the webinar for you!
This one covers a whole potpourri of circuit puzzles and troubleshooting scenarios, including:
Some pop quizzes about series and parallel circuits
Diodes, how they work, and the surprisingly tricky situations that can arise because of them
Loads in series, how they work, and what they look like in a real refrigerator schematic
A real world troubleshooting scenario invo
Got a fun one for you today, pulled right from the annals of Appliantology. That's right -- a tech just like you encountered this whacky problem and figured it out.
Here's the weird scenario: several different loads aren't working on this Whirlpool-built Thermador refrigerator. The water and ice dispensers, the dispenser light, and the freezer light are all inop. Wow, four different loads all happened to fail at the same time! Crazy, right?
A lesser tech might have gone full PCM and st
Let's say you're on a call for a Whirlpool GI6FARXXY07 refrigerator. You notice that the evaporator fan isn't running, even when the unit isn't in defrost. "Simple enough," you think, and you disconnect the fan harness and check its resistance.
Wow -- 500 K-ohms! No way that's in spec. Gotta be a bad fan motor, right?
Before we get too hasty, let's step back for a moment and do what we should have done at the start -- look at the schematic. When we do that, we can pretty easily locate
We run into water inlet solenoid valves in many different situations -- washers, dishwashers, refrigerators -- so it's important to have a firm grasp on exactly how they work. For example, I just talked with a tech recently who was wondering why low water pressure can cause inlet valves to leak.
It seemed counter-intuitive to him, and he's not wrong. Wouldn't it make more sense for high water pressure to cause leaking? But once you learn exactly how these valves work, it will all make sense
Here's something you don't see every day: a gas range that is powered only by a 9 volt battery. Pretty nifty, huh? @Littletexan told us about his encounter with this one in this post from a couple weeks ago.
Let's look at some of the unique aspects of this model. We'll start, as always, with the schematic:
Well that's about as simple as it gets! All mechanical controls -- nothing too fancy going on here.
One thing I will point out is that, while the schematic seems to show a
Here's the problem scenario:
The customer's refrigerator has stopped running. You take a look at the start device, and it's completely burnt out -- enough so that you can see that the plastic housing has melted. You swap it out for a new start device and...
Still nothing. In fact, a quick voltage measurement shows that the control board isn't sending voltage to the compressor. Now the board needs to be replaced, too.
So what happened here? Did the start device just short out and t
Here's your scenario: you're working on a Whirlpool CAM2742TQ2 Washer, and you've determined that the auto temp control (ATC) has failed such that it won't energize the water valves and allow the machine to fill. You intend to replace the ATC, but it's on backorder. Is there any clever trick you can think of that will at least get the customer going temporarily while they wait?
Time to crack out the schematic.
It looks like there's a lot going on here, what with all those alphabe
To follow along with this blog post, you should go ahead and download the refrigerant slider app called "Ref Tools" to your smartphone (don't worry, it's free!). It's the one developed by Danfoss. I'm going to be referencing a few features of that app as I explain some properties of refrigerant, so go ahead and familiarize yourself with it. It's a great tool to have on hand regardless, since it lets you painlessly calculate superheat and subcooling in sealed systems.
Got it? Good. What I wa
Team Samurai has been training appliance techs at the Master Samurai Tech Academy for over 6 years now, and helping out repairmen on the web for far longer. Mr. Appliance has already used our online training for 4 years to make their techs the best they can be. Now, BrandSource has teamed up with us, too!
BrandSource is a non-profit buying group for independent retailers of furniture, mattresses, electronics, and, of course, appliances. They help the little guys by negotiating better prices
BLDC motors aren't new technology in appliances anymore -- in fact, they've become the norm. As such, it's important to be aware of the different configurations you'll see these motors in across appliances. These configurations fall into three categories: 2-wire, 3-wire, and 4-wire.
An important thing to note before we continue: all BLDC motors in appliances are run by inverters. The inverter may be a separate board, like you'll see in washers with BLDC motors, or it may be built into the m
The current usage of “Black Friday” came from retailers celebrating the time of year they finally turned a profit.
Master Samurai Tech and Appliantology help service techs and companies to be profitable year ’round!
We’re celebrating Thanksgiving and repair excellence with a Black Friday discount.
Get 10% off everything. It’s never been a better time to enroll in a new course or renew your membership.
What do we mean by everything? Well, everything, which means:
Appli
Bimetals show up all over the appliance world in all kinds of applications. Resistive Temperature Devices (RTDs) are widely used in ovens and ranges and are commonly called "oven temperature sensors." Both are devices that respond to temperature, but beyond that, they work completely differently and serve different purposes. Watch this short excerpt from one of our many technical education webinar recordings to learn all about these devices!
The full webinar covers all the common
Sometimes, the hardest part of being a tech is dealing with the customer. Customers always have expectations, some reasonable and some not, and we have to manage these on top of performing our diagnostics and repairs.
A large part of being a real technician is knowing when to trust your own expertise over customer demands. This struggle generally manifests in two ways:
1. The customer has their own diagnosis that they're sure is correct. We've all encountered this before. Something alo
A lot of techs lose their heads when it comes to control boards. This leads to the classic PCM behavior of "throw a part at it and hope it works." But isn't there a better way of troubleshooting computer-controlled appliances?
Of course there is. With a concrete and logical troubleshooting plan like the Ten-Step Tango, you can troubleshoot any appliance with a control board with confidence. In fact, in many ways, a control board being present makes it easier to do your troubleshooting.
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
I just got back from this year's ASTI a few days ago -- a somewhat unique one, styled as "ASTI Lite". While the conference was shorter than usual, I still had a great time meeting many of the fine techs who hang out here at Appliantology and/or train with us at Master Samurai Tech. Looking forward to seeing all of you again at the next ASTI this January!
When I wasn't putting faces to Appliantology usernames, I was attending the training classes put on by various manufacturers. Ever mindful
Thermistors are everywhere in appliances these days, and they're a relatively common-fail item, so wouldn't it be nice to stock a supply of them in your service vehicle to be used on any occasion?
Well, in order to determine how feasible that is, we need to answer a question: are all thermistors interchangeable?
The short answer is no. The long answer is that thermistors are not interchangeable brand-to-brand, but they can be interchangeable within the same brand, depending on the manu
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
Many techs are intimidated when they first look at a schematic -- but you don't have to be! You can make sense of any schematic, even one with multiple control boards, by following some simple troubleshooting principles. And that's what we're going to show you in this short clip from one of our many technical training webinar recordings.
In it, we'll use a real-world tech sheet to demonstrate some of these principles, such as:
Identifying the control boards
Identifying the b
Come on a journey with me as we explore just how tangled your circuit analyses can get when you're confronted with conflicting information in a tech sheet.
Here's the Samsung washer schematic we're working with:
Nothing crazy here -- this is pretty standard stuff to see on a Samsung schematic. But when it gets weird is when you try to trace out the power supplies of various loads and board on the schematic with the help of the pinouts elsewhere in the same tech sheet.
Here's
We’ve all been hearing about R600a refrigerant for years now, and the reality is that it’s no longer an innovation in the area of household refrigeration; it’s the new standard.
With the majority of new refrigerators now being R600a models, repair companies need to be ready to perform sealed system repairs on them. This raises a few questions for these companies: how is R600a different from R134a, and what do I need to service R600a refrigerators?
R600a (let's just call it R600 from he
Knowing how to properly use a schematic for your troubleshooting is key to saving money and time. In this short presentation, the Samurai shows performing circuit analysis to identify the most useful, but also the most convenient tests to quickly zero in on the problem. Topics covered include:
- reading schematic diagrams
- strategic selection of your reference voltage
- doing live testing (appliance plugged in and running) vs. Ohms testing
- using a loading meter to test AC line vol
Electricity and circuits are at the core of what we do as techs. You've got to have a solid understanding of these in order to do any meaningful troubleshooting. So that's exactly what we cover in this excerpt from one of our many technical training webinar recordings. Give it a watch and build yourself a solid foundation!
This video is an excerpt from a longer Master Samurai Tech webinar and is free for anyone to watch. In the full webinar, we covered topics such as:
Neut
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