Our Picks

When it comes time to perform the repair and install a new part, the last thing you want is a surprise throwing a wrench in your plans. All the unexpected twists and turns should have already been dealt with during your troubleshooting. Ideally, performing the repair itself should just mean doing as little disassembly as possible, installing the new part, and collecting your repair fee.

PSC (Permanent Split Capacitor) motors are nifty pieces of technology that you'll most often encounter in Whirlpool's VWM washers. They operate a bit differently from your typical split-phase motors. Rather than having a dedicated start winding and run winding, with each winding having different specifications, PSC motors have two windings that are physically identical. The only difference between them is in what direction the windings are wound.

New technologies are never invented specifically for household appliances. We always get hand-me-downs. But just because a technology was used first in a different field doesn't mean that we're familiar with it already when it reaches appliances.

TMR (tunnel magentoresistance) sensors are one such example. Coming to us from the world of computer electronics, they serve the same purpose as Hall Effect sensors but work completely differently.

All of us techs are carrying around multimeters these days, and that means we have several different voltage measurement settings available to us at any given time. Usually these are DC voltage, AC voltage, and LoZ (low input impedance). Each of these functions has a specific use, and part of taking a voltage measurement is picking the correct setting for the job.
 

Not all LG control boards can be updated after a universal compressor is installed. If you're planning on doing sealed system work on these machines, you're going to want to check the list below to see if your model's PCB can be updated. Otherwise, you might be in for a nasty surprise.

Most of you have probably heard about loading down before -- when one failed DC component causes a ripple effect that keeps other DC components from functioning properly until the failed component is removed. But what does that actually look like in practice? And how do you go about troubleshooting it? 

No matter what refrigerator problem you're called out for, no matter if it's for a warm freezer or a noisy fan or a leaking dispenser, there's one simple step that should you should always do before anything else -- before you or the customer even opens the doors of the machine.

In the appliance repair world, we deal with two different kinds of thermistors: NTC (Negative Temperature Coefficient) and PTC (Positive Temperature Coefficient). Don't know what those terms mean? Don't worry, I'll break it down for you.

Didn't make it to ASTI this year? You missed out on some great technical info!

But don't worry -- we took careful note of all the juicy tech tips being dropped by Samsung, Bosch, and Whirlpool in their technical training and showcased them for your benefit in this latest webinar recording. Give it a watch to get the inside scoop!

What we call Parts-Changing Monkeys (PCMs) around here at Appliantology are techs who rely on pattern recognition, tech myths, and blind luck to make their repairs.

 

Appliantology isn't the only online appliance repair resource out there -- but it's by far the best. What this site has over "free" alternatives, such as Facebook repair groups, are three primary points: Organization, Privacy, and Information Integrity.

Did you miss our awesome webinar a few weeks ago? With all the computer-controlled dryers out there today, many techs forget that they still need Old Skool circuit troubleshooting skills to solve many dryer problems they'll encounter in the field today. With that in mind, our recent webinar covered four real-world dryer case studies on simple dryer circuits that trip up lots of techs who should know better (and think they do but, in fact, do not).

@fillthebarman ran into an interesting problem the other day: he had a stacked washer and dryer where the washer could only be run when the dryer was running. How is this possible? Brother @sh2sh2 had the answer:

There are some electrical terms that are often used in vague and incorrect ways by the general public. This can make things confusing for us techs, especially those new to the craft, because these terms have precise meanings when used by those in the trade. A couple of these words are short and ground.

Volts, ohms, and amps -- these are the three types of electrical measurements from which we draw our diagnostic conclusions as appliance techs. They all have their uses, but watch out -- they're not all equal in usefulness or reliability! Let's go through them one at a time.

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.

Techs as a community have developed some bits of jargon that serve as shorthand ways of describing specific technical situations. These phrases are useful for saving ourselves time and breath, but sometimes the exact definitions get blurry.  Even worse, sometimes the way that the phrase sounds gets confused for a description of the actual science/physics behind what's going on. Let's clear up a few of these terms.

You can't get around it -- you've got to understand at least the basics of thermodynamics to troubleshoot sealed system problems.

A recent topic in the tech forums here at Appliantology illustrates perfectly a point I’ve made in the past that replacing components on electronic control boards, rather than replacing the whole board, is a bad idea both for the customer and for the technician.

We troubleshot a GE Advantium Speedcooker for a no convection bake problem and determined that either the convective heating element or the TCO had failed open. We did all our troubleshooting from the control board without uninstalling the oven. Doing it this way allowed us to diagnose the problem with minimal disassembly. We half-split the problem between the control board and the heating circuit and fixed the problem on the second trip when we returned with the parts. 

Appliantology is a powerful appliance repair tool, with lots of features that may not be obvious at first glance.  

In this video, I demonstrate some very Non-PCM techniques for troubleshooting an inoperative evaporator fan problem in a Maytag (jazz board) refrigerator.

What we're talking about here is PCM stuff- finding visibly burned triacs or bulging capacitors on a board and replacing it. No troubleshooting, just monkey see monkey do. In their shortsightedness, many guys are spending time on this rather than learning how circuits work and how to troubleshoot. And they think that because they can change a bulging cap, they know electronics.   

What's interesting about these two videos is that the repairs done on each is *electrically identical* but the *physical repair looked entirely different* between the two. And that's exactly what you should notice in these two videos.

Here's a quick tip for finding service manuals for Kenmore model numbers in the Downloads section here at Appliantology.