this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2024
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Celebrating/talking about repairing stuff, the right to repair stuff, and the intersection of tech and solarpunk ideals.

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I cannot repair my washing machine without documentation. I have no idea how to use my multimeter to check the components. There are parts dealers for Beko in my area, but none of them have the service manual.

The parts shops all say go to the website for the manual as a flippant off-the-cuff answer. There are no service manuals on the Beko website -- at least not for my model. The navigation of the Beko website does not even have a path to docs. And worse, my model is treated as non-existent by the website.

What would I do if I were a professional repair service? What is the official channel?

I am open to “piracy¹” but it would be a long shot to scour all the dark web for a manual for a specific washing machine. It’s not the type of content people have a strong interest in spreading/trading.

¹As RMS says, it’s not a just term for it but sharing is awkward too.

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[–] ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

After reading other comments it seems what you're really needing is a diagnostic guide instead of a repair manual. There aren't many things that have diagnostic guides, as those doing repairs are expected to know how to diagnose.

The simple breakdown of diagnosis is: what is it not doing that it should? How would that logically happen? Go to that point and test. For example, the drum never spins when it should. The drum is spun by a belt, is the belt broken? Fix it. Not broken belt? What moves the belt? A motor, test the motor. Is it getting power as it should? Yes, bad motor. No, what feeds the power to the motor....... and on and on until you find the problem.

[–] synesthesia@thebrainbin.org 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

In the case at hand, every function seems to work. When I start a program it starts by pumping water out from the last program. Tub fills with water fine. But at the start of the wash cycle it attempts a high-speed spin with a full tub of water, which seems quite bizarre. Attempting a high-speed spin with water in the tub causes it to jump because of all the weight. It /should/ just slowly rotate in one direction, then the other direction. But instead it does a 2 second spin then pauses for a minute. Then it repeats that 2 second high-speed spin then pauses. After 4 or so repeats of that it quits and leaves a blinking start button.

My first thought was that it detected overloading or an imbalanced load and maybe tried to balance the load. But it does the same thing empty. The belt is fine and the motor is obviously strong enough to make it spin as far as I can tell. But maybe something that controls the motor is broken. I am stuck because I don’t know how to probe the various parts with my multimeter as far as what readings I should look for.

The machine has a spin-only program that should do nothing but spin. When I run that program, it obviously does not add water. It just starts the spin (as expected) but pauses 2 sec after starting to spin.. waits a min, then tries again. It looks like it spins fine but it’s giving up anyway.

[–] ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

So a control system issue.... Dumb question, but have you tried removing power completely from it? Try to get it to reset. (Is where I'd start at least)

If that doesn't work, then it's essentially just replace the control board, as the program memory is likely corrupt.

[–] synesthesia@thebrainbin.org 1 points 20 hours ago

yeah i tried unplugging from the wall. I don’t know if there is a separate motor controller board or if the motor controller is integrated into the same board with all the controls. I’m not sure how risky it is to replace the main controller board as a guess. I would like some certainty on where the fault is.

And maybe it is the motor. It looks like it spins fine to me, but if it’s at the edge of its life maybe it’s giving feedback to the controller that signals an issue with the motor.