Fisher & Paykel; Motor Control Board

[Rentakill]

Hi Guys.

Just an idea..
Over here in Nz at my local recycle station there are litrally dozens of Smart Drives lined up being crushed for scrap every week.
Ive gutted quite a few for spare parts myself, including controllers, pumps, off Balance sensors etc.
Ive also modded a few motors for use as a Generator..

Many of these washers that have been dumped have very basic faults, such as a jammed water pump, or open circuit cold water soliniod, or even just a blocked water supply filter. on the odd occasion i have found that main controller board to be faulty.

Maybe, over in Ozz, your recycle centres have just as many smart drives waiting to be crushed for scrap ?.
They're a cheap and good source for parts.


Cheers:

[rievax]

Thanks for the reply.
There are traces of corrosion, where the lacquer appears to have come off a trace or two, but it's on the opposite corner of the board, ie as far away from the pump cct as you can get. I'd have to have a closer look tomorrow and trace the signal paths to see what they connect to. There are also dots of corrosion (I think) along the bottom edge of the board.

I picked the difference in the IGBTs. Thanks. Pity. The motor drive ones were $1.50 or so, and available in Aust too. I have to wait for the others (I figured I'd order them anyway...).

I'll get the top deck bits sent to me from the phase 6 machine. So that's all that's needed? All the plastic bits from the top?

I can't be totaly sure that there wont be some small complications. The two screws that hold the deck down are in different positions but easily drilled. Also noticed that the tub's neck ring is a slightly different design. Is your mate's machine some distance away?

[paulmac]

Yeah, the donor washer is in Qld. I'm in Melbourne! (But the freight is cheap)

[rievax]

Hi Guys.

Just an idea..
Over here in Nz at my local recycle station there are litrally dozens of Smart Drives lined up being crushed for scrap every week.
Ive gutted quite a few for spare parts myself, including controllers, pumps, off Balance sensors etc.
Ive also modded a few motors for use as a Generator..

Many of these washers that have been dumped have very basic faults, such as a jammed water pump, or open circuit cold water soliniod, or even just a blocked water supply filter. on the odd occasion i have found that main controller board to be faulty.

Maybe, over in Ozz, your recycle centres have just as many smart drives waiting to be crushed for scrap ?.
They're a cheap and good source for parts.


Cheers:

We have a recycle centre in our area also.
Phase 7 models can now be found there with faulty RPS as the only problem. The RPS can be removed from the potting and repaired.

[trash]

Interesting, these sound like some modules that serviceman friends keep asking me to fix.
I offered to fix them so they don't break, but they said, "No, repair them but don't fix the problem !"

So now I'm part of the problem and an even lesser part of the solution

[paulmac]

Hi folks.

Well I turned up at the Gold Coast airport check in with some slightly strange baggage; the top of a F&P washer wrapped up in 20m of glad wrap...

I was in Qld for the weekend for work, and I picked up my mates phase 6 top.

I fitted it all to the phase 5 machine, but I'm not sure if I made a fatal error, or this was half the problem... The tub was still 10% full, and the first thing I did was to activate the pump and empty it. From then on I got an error 66. I unplugged it all for 15 minutes, and I thought I had it, but as I thumped on the lid to start a test run, the error came up again. I wish I'd left the pressure tube off before emptying it... oh well.

(Having said that, the reason that my mate trashed his was because it had flooded out his laundry twice. (He reckons only when it was set to auto water level.) As it hadn't cost him anything either, it was time to go!)

So I had nothing left to try other than to swap pressure sensors, which I managed to do with my soldering iron and very little else.

Presto, one working (and slightly newer looking) washer! The only proviso is that the high water level seems to be a tad high, ie beyond the high tide mark on the agitator. Setting a normal wash (and now "favourite") to medium or med-high fixes that.

The next task, when parts arrive, is to repair the phase 5 module, and test it out.

Thanks for your encouragement and advice, folks!

[rievax]

Hi folks.

Well I turned up at the Gold Coast airport check in with some slightly strange baggage; the top of a F&P washer wrapped up in 20m of glad wrap...

I was in Qld for the weekend for work, and I picked up my mates phase 6 top.

I fitted it all to the phase 5 machine, but I'm not sure if I made a fatal error, or this was half the problem... The tub was still 10% full, and the first thing I did was to activate the pump and empty it. From then on I got an error 66. I unplugged it all for 15 minutes, and I thought I had it, but as I thumped on the lid to start a test run, the error came up again. I wish I'd left the pressure tube off before emptying it... oh well.

(Having said that, the reason that my mate trashed his was because it had flooded out his laundry twice. (He reckons only when it was set to auto water level.) As it hadn't cost him anything either, it was time to go!)

So I had nothing left to try other than to swap pressure sensors, which I managed to do with my soldering iron and very little else.

Presto, one working (and slightly newer looking) washer! The only proviso is that the high water level seems to be a tad high, ie beyond the high tide mark on the agitator. Setting a normal wash (and now "favourite") to medium or med-high fixes that.

The next task, when parts arrive, is to repair the phase 5 module, and test it out.

Thanks for your encouragement and advice, folks!

Good to hear about a success story.
connecting the pressure tube with water in the tub will cause problems, see fault code 11. But sounds like the original sensor was faulty.
You can adjust down the water level by adding more capacitance across the sensor. 30pf changes the level by about 1 cm. Phase 6 motor controller PCBs can suffer from condensation damage also, resulting in blown IGBTs. Also there are 3 in series voltage sensing resistors(332k) that gradually drift low causing the machine to do the rinse repeatedly or the main motor to not run at all.

[paulmac]

Cheers Rievax.

Sounds like it be worth it to give the new board a coating of PCB spray lacquer...? It looks pristine at the moment.

[rievax]

Cheers Rievax.

Sounds like it be worth it to give the new board a coating of PCB spray lacquer...? It looks pristine at the moment.

For sure, thats what I do. Watch out for the edge connectors. And stay away from the pressure sensor. It has a vent hole underneath.

[wondernz]

i have a project im working on and i was wondering if any of you know a way to change / reprogram the smart drive controllers

we have built a paintball mask washer out of a smart drive 7.5kg and now we want a better controller for it.

currently we use slow spin (spray rinse with not water hooked up) and turn on a wash pump that pumps water/chem out of the bottom, into the top of the machine much like a dishwasher. we use 5L of water/chem that is put in the machine at the start and no water hoses hooked up.

then we turn the pump off and run a std. med spin

this all takes a bit of mucking around advancing cycles and so forth and i have been asked to make more machines so i need to make a proper controller.

the options are :
reprogram the smart drive controller to run slow spin + water valve open (water valve output will be hooked to wash pump) and then standard med spin

replace the logic control and just use the stepper driver part of the controller. for this to make it easy i need to find some who knows where to tap into the control to do this .

make a whole new stepper driver and controller.

the current smartdrive control im using is a blue phase 3 and they are the most common around these parts but i can use any phase control if i have to.

any ideas and help would be much appreciated.

thanks chris

[aargee]

Long shot, have you approached F&P?

Another option would be to program a microcontroller to act as a human and interface it to the keyboard, to close switch contacts, etc at the right times. Just like a hardware macro recorder.

Breaking into the code for the machine will not be easy...

[stewart1]

We have a recycle centre in our area also.
Phase 7 models can now be found there with faulty RPS as the only problem. The RPS can be removed from the potting and repaired.

I have a machine with the RPS fault, without having removed it yet from the machine, what normally goes wrong with the sensor that can be repaired by removing it from the potting? is it a simple dry joint or something similer.

Cheers,

[rievax]

I have a machine with the RPS fault, without having removed it yet from the machine, what normally goes wrong with the sensor that can be repaired by removing it from the potting? is it a simple dry joint or something similer.

Cheers,

Are you certain its the potted type? If it is, it needs to be removed from the potting. I have done 3 of them. Its always been a surface mount 0 ohm link that corrodes and goes intermittent open.

[stewart1]

Are you certain its the potted type? If it is, it needs to be removed from the potting. I have done 3 of them. Its always been a surface mount 0 ohm link that corrodes and goes intermittent open.

Awsome, thanks for that. sounds to simple, will get that done over the weekend. cheers

[rievax]

Awsome, thanks for that. sounds to simple, will get that done over the weekend. cheers

Its easy to damage the thin PCB material. Let me know if you confirm that it is potted. Ill tell you more detail as far as I can remember.

[aargee]

Are you certain its the potted type? If it is, it needs to be removed from the potting. I have done 3 of them. Its always been a surface mount 0 ohm link that corrodes and goes intermittent open.

Yep, that's exactly what I've found (see back on page 1 of this thread), although upon inspection it hardly seems like any evidence of corrosion, more like a bunch of faulty SMD components..