Thread Number: 57641  /  Tag: Modern Automatic Washers
New Whirlpool Duet showing signs of possible issues?
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Post# 800504   12/23/2014 at 10:37 (3,383 days old) by washerdude (Canada )        

Today our duet did something really strange. I was downstaires and it was on it's final spin and was in the process of ramping down. However, right after that I heard the lid lock going crazy. It followed this pattern, Ramp down from final spin to finish > Unlock >Lock > Unlock. I knew something wasen't right, so I went upstaires and the clock read 4 minutes remaining. Now at first I thought something paranormal was going on (LOL). But that brings me to the Play/Pause button. If somebody were to pause it, it would make a beep then unlock (Push pause >Beep > Unlock/lock). It never made any beeping sound when that happend. So I hit the play/pause button and the time skipped to 1 minute and finished up. The washer is only 3 months old and the model is WFW72HEDW0. What could this be?




Post# 800516 , Reply# 1   12/23/2014 at 11:55 (3,383 days old) by henene4 (Heidenheim a.d. Brenz (Germany))        
The secret life of PCBs...

Well, this happens. Any PCB programm on any applaince I used long enough had some flaws. And time displays and locks are the least thing to happen. If it would be a physical problem, it would likely be a connection issue with the door lock. And in such a case, the machine would probably throw an E-Code right away and, if it is an DirectDrive unit, it would start an emergency break right away, causing a loud squeling noise. As long as it only happens rarely, I would not care to much.
Our first electronicly controlled washer was a Miele W961. Sometimes (aka ones or twice a year), it would simply forget to turn on the heater. This than caused it to throw the error code at us. What caused it, I dunno.
Our next washer, the E-Lux build Privileg Sensation 9415, had a cycle combi that should not have existed. Cottons Eco 40°C with TimeSaver. Really a nice cycle (the rinse water levels were reduced from high to medium with extended spins between the rinses). Further, I glitched the final spin cycle. In 3 consecutive final spin cycles on the Cottons 30° cycle, with 5 minutes remaining, I paused the cycle for a few seconds. This was the point of the final spin ramp-up from 1000 up to 1200 RPM into the gradual increase to 1450 RPM (E-Lux washer usually spin at xx50 rpm). From than on, on any Cottons 30°␘° cycle, at 5 minutes remaining, the washer always slowed down for a second before speeding up again. It this for the rest of the 4 years before it (oh irony) got bad bearings in an EasyCare 60°C cycle.
Our Panasonic had no door safety feature. The door locked, stayed loocked and did not unlock in spin cycles. But even on the hottest wash, no matter which point of time, as long as the tub stood still, you could pause it and it would unlock. Even at 90°C.
The AEG my grandma has now isn't verry exact with washtimes. The final spin starts at 17 minutes remaining, stops at 7 minutes, fluffs till 4 minutes. Than, as it starts to unlock, it switches to 3 minutes, unlocks and jumps to zero. On a cycle with rinse hold, it dose not substract the time of the final spin. It even adds a minute. But still, during rinse hold, it displays 0. Than, as you start the spinning, it adds the spin cycle time again.
Our Whirlpool we have now has some glitches as well. Whenever you press pause, you are in danger to trash the cycle. Sometimes, it just restarts all over again as you exit pause mode. Pressing pause during spin equals a cycle abortion. You are supposed to be abled tto change cycle during pause mode (for example wash on Easy Care, but rinse and spin on Cottons), but this seldomly works. And on distribution, it sometimes simply shuts of the drain pump and gets stuck in an infinite loop of rebalancing.
As long as such things as you described only happen seldomly, again, just keep an eye on it. If there is something actually wrong, the fault will reoccur.


Post# 800518 , Reply# 2   12/23/2014 at 12:16 (3,383 days old) by BoschExxcel ()        

henene4, Ive found my whirlpool aborts the programme when pausing on the final spin. I then have to put it on the separate spin cycle, a bit of a pain!

Post# 800520 , Reply# 3   12/23/2014 at 12:28 (3,383 days old) by electron1100 (England)        
A Joke?

electron1100's profile picture
Surely you are joking, in this day and age manufacturers are sourcing unreliable control boards...........my god imagine such a board in an aircraft for example......oh I think I will switch off engine Number 3.......amazing all this technology and still they cannot make a simple program board..................and yet I know several computer controlled machines from the 1980s that are still working without problems or spurious programs.

Amazing just amazing


Post# 800528 , Reply# 4   12/23/2014 at 13:26 (3,383 days old) by henene4 (Heidenheim a.d. Brenz (Germany))        

You can't compare aircrafts and washers. More than 300 people put there lifes on a part in an aircraft, only 1 persons puts the money worth its clothing on a washer. Do you really want to compare laundry and even a single persons life?
@BoschExcell Yeah, I know, this is really annoying. Especially as the seperate spin cycle always takes 19 minutes. So no gentle respinning possible...


Post# 800536 , Reply# 5   12/23/2014 at 14:36 (3,383 days old) by BoschExxcel ()        

Mine normally cuts down the time.

I guess if you wanted gentle you could reduce the spins speed and stop the programme before it's finished?


Post# 800538 , Reply# 6   12/23/2014 at 14:58 (3,383 days old) by henene4 (Heidenheim a.d. Brenz (Germany))        

I ment if I select the seperate spin cycle and set it to 400rpm, it still spins through the whole sequence (which is, basicly, the cottons spin sequence). Of course, I can abort the cycle to cut down spinning time, but still, not as well solved as on the AEG we have. There, on the sperate spin cycle, everything at 1000rpm or higher is a standard long final spin, everything below is a short delicate spin. I don't get why Whirlpool did not applay something like this, especially with only 3 spin speeds selectable. The highest speed could trigger a long cottons spin, the medium one an easy care spin and the low one a short, delicate spin cycle.

Post# 800609 , Reply# 7   12/23/2014 at 20:40 (3,383 days old) by Iheartmaytag (Wichita, Kansas)        
It is possible it was a one time glitch

iheartmaytag's profile picture

Keep track and write down when it does goofy stuff.  Since is is under warranty, don't hesitate to call service.  

 

My Maytag 5000 series does funny things from time to time that has worried me, but it doesn't do it consistently enough to go shopping for a new machine, or call for service.

 

Like: sometimes if you pause the machine to add clothes in the Heavy duty cycle, the time remaining will go back to the original setting when the cycle started.   


Post# 800646 , Reply# 8   12/24/2014 at 00:03 (3,383 days old) by mark_wpduet (Lexington KY)        
My duet

mark_wpduet's profile picture
threw an f11 code once like 5 yrs ago, but hasn't since.......so I guess glitches can happen. Hopefully that's all it is.

Post# 800660 , Reply# 9   12/24/2014 at 05:00 (3,383 days old) by electron1100 (England)        
Life Experience

electron1100's profile picture
Sorry Henene4 you clearly misunderstand my comment

Gary


Post# 800662 , Reply# 10   12/24/2014 at 05:27 (3,383 days old) by arbilab (Ft Worth TX (Ridglea))        

arbilab's profile picture
As a sidebar, aircraft computers DO perform unanticipated actions. *Most* resulting deaths are compounded by erroneous crew actions and/or unanticipated hardware anomalies and computer responses thereto.

But really, there is no viable excuse for code that can't make it through a washing machine cycle without gagging. There are however, reasons. I'm not a 'professional coder' but I've written flawless machine control code because I fully understood the machine I was controlling. 'Professional coders' seldom have such utility. Their understanding of the machine is slightly worse (nominal error) than the data they were given. Otherwise they have no concept of the machine itself. HUGE handicap.

Next, what we used to call 'testing', much like what we used to call 'employment' within the development chain, have both drastically diminished along parallel curves. Much/most hardware is sold with known deficiencies and the anticipation of needed firmware revisions.

Case in point, entire lines of late 00s Dell desktops had firmware (BIOS) that couldn't control the fan. Fan control is the second-simplest BIOS job, after power on/off. Yet it took FIVE firmware revisions to get it right. An eighth-grader with engineering aspirations could get it right in two. Pardon the Seinfeld reference, but whazup wit dat?

It's corporations-- ALL of them-- loathe to define/identify/pay for competence. IOW competence exists but dumbshits are cheaper so that's what's controlling your washer.


Post# 800666 , Reply# 11   12/24/2014 at 05:49 (3,383 days old) by henene4 (Heidenheim a.d. Brenz (Germany))        
Flawless codes

There is nothing like a flawless code. Period.
One should think after more than 20 years of Windows, all faults should be cleared. Well, this tablet I am writing on crashes about once a week with a daily runtime of approx. 16 hours.
At a certain point of complexity, makeing a code "flawless" is inefficent or impossible for a company. And yeah, it is impossible for a professional coder to know everything about what he is codeing. He works like the code he is writing: He only does what he is told, and if there are problems, it is usually not his fault.


Post# 800673 , Reply# 12   12/24/2014 at 06:54 (3,382 days old) by electron1100 (England)        
Ardilab

electron1100's profile picture
Thankyou for making some sense of this situation with washing machine control panels, so basically it is down cost as usual I take it :-( I still think it is a sad state of affairs.........
Gary


Post# 800690 , Reply# 13   12/24/2014 at 08:34 (3,382 days old) by dnastrau (Lords Valley, PA)        
Wacky control board - bad ground?

When we built our house in 2000 we purchased a new Whirlpool top of the line gas range. When it was a few months old, it started having intermittent problems where the oven would shut off and refuse to reignite or the stovetop burners would refuse to ignite. I called the dealer - but of course the problem refused to manifest itself again at that point. He said to call back when it malfunctioned again long enough for them to come and diagnose the problem.

Of course, the problems didn't come back until six months after the warranty had expired - with much more frequency and at very inopportune times (my wife was standing by with a sledgehammer on Christmas morning that year with a half-cooked ham in the oven that refused to reignite). At that point, I took the cover off the back of the console and discovered that the PC board was grounded to the chassis through a ground wire held on by one of the board's mounting screws. That screw was slightly too long and was bottoming out in the standoff without allowing the ground wire to make a solid contact with the PC board's ground plane. I simply put a metal washer on the screw and now the board was firmly grounded. Well over a decade later the problems have never reappeared.

If your Duet acts up again, it might be worth checking the connections to the PC board as well as the ground connection. So far, our 2007 Maytag Epic 9700 (Duet clone) has behaved itself (fingers crossed).

Good luck!

Andrew S.



Post# 800739 , Reply# 14   12/24/2014 at 13:33 (3,382 days old) by Imperial70 (MA USA)        

I think dnastrau is on to something.  I worked in manufacturing and although software faults can act like that too, they usually are more reproducible following a certain order of events (unless there is a race condition, but that's another story).

 

Cold solder joints, improperly torqued bolts and connectors with loose pins are just a few of many problems that could happen.  Add to that the vibrations of a washing machine you have the perfect setup for a hardware fault.


Post# 801415 , Reply# 15   12/29/2014 at 11:41 (3,377 days old) by washerdude (Canada )        

It did it just did it again on the heavy duty cycle. Same pattern.

Post# 814833 , Reply# 16   3/19/2015 at 22:11 (3,297 days old) by washerdude (Canada )        

I'm a little convinced at this point something isin't right with the computer board and not lock. Just yesterday right after the first spin, the door unlocked once again by its own. But this time, it continued to fill and the door could be easily opened (Fill > Unlock > Continue to fill). It didn't stop filling even though the door was clearly unlocked but the tub wasen't spinning. I held start and it began turning the tub and continued as normal. It is strange how the board didn't realize the door was unlocked and continued to fill as if nothing was wrong. I think this should be seriously addressed by Whirlpool because if it does this while it was filling, i'm pretty sure it could do it in its high speed spin.

Post# 814845 , Reply# 17   3/20/2015 at 01:34 (3,297 days old) by mark_wpduet (Lexington KY)        
The first year I had my Duet (which is now 10 years old)

mark_wpduet's profile picture
the board had problems! I think that's the reason I joined this forum in the first place back then. I would get F/DL code flashing and the machine would beep and stop. It would NOT start back, but I discovered that if I hit the top back right side of the machine really hard, it would start working again. I shared that info on gardenweb laundry forum and people who had the same issues were so happy that hitting the machine worked. (LOL)

Anyway -

The repair person came out, ordered a door lock (that took week), he came back, installed the new lock and guess what - that wasn't it! F/DL returned. He came back out and messed with the connections and that seemed to help (that's all he did on that trip), that worked for a few weeks, then the F/DL returned. Another call, he came back and ordered a new control board. Once he installed that, I plugged my machine into a surge protector and it has worked great ever since, except an F11 code I got once like 5 years ago.....LUCKILY, the machine would work while I was waiting for repair. If it gave an error, I just hit the top really hard and it worked for a few cycles, so at least I could get laundry done while waiting.

I'm honestly NOT sure if the surge protector is helping, but with these new machines, I always tell people to use a surge protector just in case.


Post# 814903 , Reply# 18   3/20/2015 at 11:41 (3,296 days old) by lakewebsterkid (Dayton, Ohio)        
Newer Duets

Around a year old, My Duet gave an error code that said h5h. I could not find anything on it to save my life. So, I hit cancel, F1 appeared and unplugged the machine for a few and no problems after that. We called out a service man to look at it under warranty and he replaced the control panel anyways. He could not explain the h5h code. I even had a picture of it. But, no problems since!


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