Washing machine info ...

domestic

Drum

it

Beware of jagged metalwork , cover over/ tape down all such with something, before working inside it

Oh, those were the one's they laid off. The one's that cleaned up those issues before assembly. Look at the money they saved!

Not to worry though, I am sure they have it written up some where that only qualified service centers should work on the appliance, and the service center has a big disclaimer on the manual indicating to use gloves while servicing, there by, removing all liability from the maker.

Jamie

As it happens, it is the brushes, and it's not too difficult a job to replace them. Unfortunately, the place that I used to get such items from locally, has closed its doors, so I have finished up ordering direct from the Hotpoint online spares centre.

Arfa

How long do those brushes last? The old induction motorsran for decades. I pulled the working motor out of my mom's worn out dryer years ago. It was bought new in '57. I mad a stand for it, and added an arbor to use it for a grinder. It was still running 50 years after it was built.

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

It seems that brushed motors are being used more now, especially in Europe.

The last unit I had my eyes on was a multispeed, exotic functional washing machine. It was a variable speed AC motor with no brushes. The drive control board had half of the output fets shorted in it. He told me that it was giving them problems in starting and it finally gave up.

So after a bad motor was also found and a bad drive board, it got tossed.

Jamie

The machine is used pretty much every day at least once for washing the aprons and dish towels from our food businesses, and twice or more if there is household clothes washing to do as well. I would guess that we have owned this model for probably 10 years, and this is the first set of brushes that I can recall it having, so you work it out ! We had a Hotpoint before this one, and we probably had that one 15 or more years, through all of the kids' growing up and school years, so heavily used, and I remember getting brushes for that from the village store, twice.

Arfa

I don't think that in 35 years of owning washing machines, I have ever had one with anything other than a "universal" (as in field coils and armature in series) brush-geared motor fitted for drum drive. Mostly the pump motors are brushless induction motors, and certainly, all of the tumble dryers that I have owned have had induction motor drive.

Bear in mind that in the UK, unlike in the U.S. , we went straight from twin-tub machines, with a vertical actuator in a static tub, and a vertical spin dryer, to front loading 'automatics'. Very considerable oomph is needed to shift a horizontal rotating drum full of water and washing, and even more to get it up to 1000 RPM and beyond, for spin drying. I'm not sure that a compact induction motor would have the power and revs range to be able to do that. Not so easy to control the rotation direction either for the anti-tangle reversing washing action. At least I have always assumed that was the reason that brush-geared motors were used in these machines ??

Arfa

Hi Arfa

I spent over 20 years repairing domestic appliances. You are right about the twintub/front loader thing. A couple of manufacturers made top loaders, Hotpoint, which was a huge machine used a very complicated gearbox and centrifugal clutch arrangement - when the motor ran in one direction it agitated the washing, and circulated the water, and in the other direction spun the drum and drained out. All relatively trouble free.

Philips made a compact top loader with a low voltage DC motor (using the heating element as a dropper resistor) and a silly bakelite centrifugal clutch and variable cone drive. The drum was similar to a front loader but mounted sideways with a hatch in the periphery.

Most if not all British front loaders used brushed motors, continental machines generally used induction motors using capacitor control. A couple of exceptions were Indesit and Zanussi which used brushed motors in their high spin speed machines, I think about 800 rpm was about the limit with an induction motor.

The few Brit machines which used induction motors - Hotpoint twintub and top loader - used a 'relay' in series with the field coil to momentarily energise the starting windings. If the relay stuck the magic smoke was released!

I have no idea how many pairs of Hotpoint/Hoover/Servis/ motor brushes I`ve changed, but it must be many many hundreds.

You can readily get service manuals for all Hotpoint machines btw.

Ron

Hi Ron. All interesting stuff. The brushes were taken out by my mate who was here fixing my son's car whilst I was out. He took them off the motor by leaning the machine over at 45 degrees, and taking them out from underneath. Not so easy putting the new ones back in that way, because they are about

1.5" inches long with new springs behind them. Also, because the carriers are inclined at about 45 deg on the motor frame, the new brushes have a similar 45 deg 'rake' machined on the end of them so that they sit 'square' on the commutator. It was like trying to force a jack-in-the-box into a bean can, and getting the screws back in from that angle was nigh on impossible. Eventually, I just took the motor out, as it was only two bolts. Then very easy to do out on the bench. I turned the machine right over on its side to refit it. All worked ok, so all back together now and back in service :-)

So where can you get Hotpoint service manuals ?

Arfa

I can't for the life of me remember where I used to get them from, possibly Willow Vale or Electrue - which are now both assimilated into Connect Services, but I think Hotpoint themselves will sell you one. Whenever one of the local appliance engineers got a new manual, we would make copies for the rest of us.

Ron