Fisher and Paykel Smartdrive 051 MW051K control panel

[alexGS]

I was quite happy to get my latest acquisition working tonight – Smartdrive 051, for free (it is quite old! 24/11/1995 quite easy to remember as that was my Dad’s birthday, obviously not 1995 but you know what I mean.) It’s the middle-of-the-range model. I think that’s why it’s called an ‘MW’.

Well I just happened to take the control panel board out of its blue box – and it has the FULL set of buttons and lights (unlike my newer Smartdrive, where they only put in as many as each model needs). Little things like this do tend to keep me amused for a few minutes. I noticed that when I pushed ‘delay start’ (for example), there was a long beep and the relevant orange LEDs came on in sequence. So the buttons seem to be there and programmed! Maybe that’s why the control panel box has the label ‘GW’ on it. Gee Whiz?

When I put the control panel board back into the housing, the delay start (and other ‘extra’ buttons) becomes disabled.

So I’m guessing it has something to do with those ‘size’ plunger switches. Both are pushed in by the housing when the board goes back in. It’s a 5kg machine.

Now of course the tinkerer in me wants to figure out what switch settings correspond to 5kg and the model-with-all-the-features. I guess with two plungers, that’s only three more possibilities in addition to the ‘correct’ one that I don’t want. 😉 I’d even go and buy a panel label to ‘uncover’ all the LEDs and buttons. Actually, maybe I’d make one.

Anyway to my surprise there was a small PCB, attached with two white wires to the control panel PCB, loaded with a chain of surface-mount resistors that get hot to the touch 😯 This had discoloured the blue plastic at the edge. There were two more resistors that have been ‘cooking’ near the middle of the board – but most of the baking was at that small PCB at the right edge (as you would look at the panel). The solder mask had been burned off the PCB. I wasn’t very impressed. Seems that F&P were having some problems with power dissipation – with that and the water cooling 😉 I’ll be sticking with my newer machine.

I checked the voltage and it was 15.6 volts – says 15.5V on the PCB – 0.1 of a volt seemed to be within a reasonable tolerance to me.

I decided to move the small PCB outside the blue box and I attached some video-card-RAM heatsinks to the resistors. A quick test revealed two things: 1) the heatsinks don’t get nearly as hot as the resistors/PCB did, so they’re doing their job, and 2) 15.6V really drills into your finger ?! 😳 I wouldn’t have expected such a shock when I pushed the heatsink and made contact with one of the solder blobs. I’d advise any first timers to treat ALL parts as ‘live, with high enough voltage to shock, even if it doesn’t harm you, it might cause you to do something silly!’.

-Alex

[alexGS]

Re: Fisher and Paykel Smartdrive 051 MW051K control panel

Well it all turned out OK – kind of – the ‘extra’ buttons do actually work when it’s all put together.

BUT the machine has other problems. It seems to do a cold wash OK (I tried three, and if it played up at all, it was at the very beginning). Any warm or hot wash leads to random stoppages with various lights illuminated (e.g. spin fast and medium lights), either a continuous beep (not beeps at one second intervals, I mean BEEEEEEEEEEEEE…) or no beep.

The lights that appear seem to be random – sometimes two of the ‘cycle’ button lights, sometimes all spin speed lights come on.

There don’t seem to be any errors (no regular beeps or wash-stage lights, no wash-stage lights in diagnostics mode).

To put it another way, the machine can be working fine at any part of the wash cycle – either just started washing, or filling to rinse, or spinning, and then it will silently stop with a few of the water temp, spin speed, or cycle button (Wool, Heavy Duty etc.) lights lit up. The power button has no effect – it has to be unplugged and plugged back in, whereupon it will restart OK.

I tried searches but it’s difficult when there are no error codes to go on. I just wonder whether anyone else has had this problem or whether there is a special process for diagnosing the ‘non-error’ lights.

Thanks
-Alex

[Penguin45]

Re: Fisher and Paykel Smartdrive 051 MW051K control panel

Alex – may I just point out that it isn’t the volts that get you, it’s the amps. People survive lightning strikes because whilst the voltage is massive, the current is minimal.

Be careful……….

Some of our Antipodean colleagues may be able to offer you some advice on the more general problems.

Running multiple threads gets very confusing – if you’d like to get some sort of dialogue going, please try and keep it in one thread.

Cheers,
Penguin45.

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