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Re: meggers
Hi Martin: Could it not be done both ways? firstly on the Forum for engineers who want / need to know now & then in the next fault code guide, so that it’s there as a ready reference for the engineer on site.
Talking of the Fault code guide, any idea when the new 1 is due out? mine is getting a bit worn now 😆 it’s another excellent piece of kit for engineers.Andy
Re: wasted callouts
Don’t you just love customers, went to 1 yesterday booked for 8.30 a.m no 1 home so left a card, phonecall from customer 10.30 to say she had to go out but would be back after 12 noon so re-booked for 1.30. When I get there once again get no answer so phone the customer on her mobile to be told she had met friends & decided to stay in town for Lunch. No prizes for guessing my answer when she asked me to call back after 5 p.m 😡
Andy
Re: meggers
Hi Martin: Can’t fault you mate, an informative article would be an excellent idea. Maybe the problem for a lot of engineers when it comes to Meggers is that they don’t understand them so can’t see the advantages they can bring to our everyday work, apart from the safety aspect. I know mine has paid for itself time & time again over the years & continues to do so. 🙂
Andy
Re: meggers
adv wrote:weve beeen in buisness 35 years , never had megger/ never killed any one,yet any way 😳
Hi adv: If you do decide to buy an insulation tester, try http://www.cpc.co.uk they have a good range to choose from with prices starting from less than £60.00 & i’m sure we will all be only too glad to help you learn the best way to use it, as Chris so rightly says they will pay for themselves pretty quickly in saved fault finding time.
Andy
Re: meggers
Penguin45 wrote:Amazing how we can wander away from the point of a topic.
Adv wanted information – he’s got an earful instead. I had thought that one of the key fuctions of this site was to help and advise our fellow engineers on technical matters.
I don’t have a Megger, I have an Isotech device. This is capable of knocking out 1000v and will find an earth breakdown on any given component when isolated from its circuitry. Pick an input, pick an earth, press the button and it ain’t difficult. If there’s a circuit, it shows on the display.
Not difficult. That said, this was a £270 purchase. I guesstimate that it paid for itself inside a year. It will also do the general earth and loop test (as well as surprising the very determined cat when required to) in a matter of moments.
Chris.
Hi Chris: Sounds like a good piece of kit, I don’t have a megger anymore either I use a Martindale on site & a Uni T insulation multimeter in the workshop but most engineers call any insulation tester a Megger no matter what the make, if adv decides to buy an insulation tester there are quite a few perfectly good examples in the CPC catalogue from £50.00 new.
Andy
Re: meggers
leavemetogetonwithit wrote:That’s true. It was intended for DIYers. But if such a respected practitioner of our art can write a book suggesting such things to the public and has not yet, to my knowledge, after twenty years, been prosecuted for inciting people to injure or kill themselves then I don’t think I or anyone else on here has too much to worry about.
As for worrying about courts, just how many from our trade have caused injury or death to their customers? And how many have been taken to court for it? And how many are languishing in jail as we speak?
If you take your motor to the garage and pay them for an MOT test and next day a wheel falls off, are they liable for any damage caused?
I’m all for doing whatever is practical to ensure I don’t hurt anyone. But there are limits. I take responsibility for anything arising due to my workmanship. But if an element I didn’t even touch decides to go low insulation next day and kills my customer, I’ll be damned if that’s my fault.
Mike.Hi Mike: Nobody suggested that Graham was inciting people to injure or kill themselves, all I pointed out to you was that he had also made another statement regarding Proffessional engineers & safety testing / fault finding & you seemed to have missed this point. Just because people receiving shocks from appliances being left in an unsafe condition does’nt get reported very often does’nt mean it’s not happening & for a variety of reasons people don’t report it, many will just call a different engineer to repair the problem. As for not taking responsibility for someone elses work, then I think you will find that it’s last person to work on the appliance takes responsibility for ensuring it’s safe. As for the hypothetical element deciding to go low insulattion next day, well if you had done the tests & ensured a good Earth to the appliance, then the customer would not be dead. I don’t quite understand why you seem to have taken this so personally when adv the engineer who started the topic in the 1st place obviously has not.
Andy
Re: meggers
leavemetogetonwithit wrote:I remember reading in Graham Dixon’s Washing Machine Repair manual, albeit about 20 years ago, (probably still got my copy somewhere) the suggestion to use the disconnect & try it method of elimination (with a plug in circuit braeker) to diagnose low insulation faults on washers.
I wasn’t even suggesting that.
We are talking about an appliance which is showing a fault code (not blowing a trip). We all know that many modern appliances do such a thing for earth leakage faults in the range of 20MR which is well within safety limits.
Haranguing adv for not having a megger will achieve nothing to advance the cause of public safety. More likely to drive him away from this site (and me too) where he would otherwise have undoubtedly had an opportunity to learn better methods.
Mike.Hold up Mike: Wasn’t Grahams book intended for the Diy’er? If you check back in your book it also said that Proffessional repair Engineers carried out Insulation tests with a Megger to find Low Insulation & For Safety testing and gave the required values for this, The use of a plug in RCD was suggested for DIY’ers as most would’nt be able to afford a Megger.
Nobody singled out adv for not having a Megger, it’s a sad fact that the majority of appliance Engineers don’t own a Megger & therefore don’t safety test repairs on completion. If a customer gets Electrocuted, telling a Court that you plugged the appliance in via an RCD & it did’nt trip is’nt going to work it’s no proof that the appliance was safe & had a good Earth.
Andy.
Re: meggers
Hi Alex: Until the Government decide to pull their finger out & make safety testing compulsory it’s just going to get worse, it’s the same in the Commercial sector as well. The Majority of “Engineers” don’t have a Megger or know how to use 1 & don’t even do the most basic Earth continuity test with a Multimeter, as for Loop testing I don’t know what it’s like in your area but I have only come across 1 other appliance engineer who has 1 in my area.
Andy
Re: Pat Test Failure Whirlpool ADP4501/5
Touch current: The Electric current that passes through a Human or Animal body when it touches accessible parts of an Appliance or Installation & as you said is basically what us oldies call Earth leakage, a lot of testers don’t have this feature & on my course we were told that it was’nt a statutory test.
Andy
Re: Pat Test Failure Whirlpool ADP4501/5
Hi Mike: It is possible that the operator doesn’t have too much experience of PAT testing or is not that familiar with his PAT tester. From table 15.3 of the IEE code of practice it shows that the maximum allowable touch current for this type of appliance is: 3.5mA.
Assuming that the listed results you gave are in mA not mV then this would indicate that the appliance passed as your tests show, the code of practice shows that the Touch test is an additional or Complementary test to the Insulation test, for use if the Insulation test cannot be used or gives suspect results. 500v is the given voltage for safety testing & fault finding on 230 / 240 volt appliances.
By the way when you say an almost perfect reading, can you remember what it was?Hope that Helps: Andy
Re: meggers
The short answer to that is yes, if you work on an appliance & someone then gets injured or killed using the item you will be liable to prosecution.
The only way to cover yourself is to test all repairs for Electrical safety on completion & keep a written record of the test results, the easiest way to do this is write the results on your jobsheet & the customer invoice. I allways tag the appliance as well to show that it has passed the safety tests, personally I would be lost without my insulation tester & don’t understand how people can work without 1. 😯
As for all the big boys doing the tests, Simple: They know as well as we do what happens when you Electrocute a customer.Andy
Re: W/Pool D/W ADG6340MVA 7 Flashes – Does It Really Mean…
Hi Lawrence: The Flowmeter has 3 connections to it: 1 is a 5v DC supply, the second is the ground connection which is normally in the centre.
The 3rd wire is the square wave output to the PCB which counts the pulses to determine how much water is being taken in, you can monitor this with a good multimeter when the machine is filling & for a working unit should see a regular pulse from 0v to 5v & then back to 0v.
It’s easier to monitor with a good Analogue meter, but a Digital with Bargraph does the job pretty well.Hope that helps: Andy 8)
Re: W/Pool D/W ADG6340MVA 7 Flashes – Does It Really Mean…
Hi Lawrence: Have you checked the output from the flow meter to the control PCB to see if theere is an on / off pulse there? May save you having to replace parts.
Andy
Re: Electrolux EOB5630X went with a bang! Please help.
Hi Peter: Unfortunately you may well now find out that you have caused more damage by doing this.
The other problem is that the original fault you had may not have been just due to the cut out, as you said the fan was running slowly & the oven was probably overheating which is what was causing the cutout to operate. It is quite possible that you now also have a faulty control board as well if it’s Electronic, your best bet would be to call a good local engineer that does free estimates & see what they say is gone.Hope that helps: Andy
Please remember if you are opening the appliance: POWER OFF FIRST. 😯 😯
Re: hoover select 1500 model hspf 157 stop light flashing
Hi: When you say you changed the door latch, do you mean the Interlock switch inside? If you have then the likely cause of your problem is the control PCB & these are quite expensive and not really a DIY repair.
PLEASE REMEMBER: POWER OFF & PLUG OUT BEFORE OPENING THE MACHINE.
Andy
