Door mechanism.

[vilian]

Hey guys,

I bought a NEO washing machine 3 years ago. It has been working rahter well all this time ngl. However, a few days ago the door mechanism broke.
You see, i'd normally take it to repair service, but since it's rather old, the warranty is long over. So i disasbled it and i took a peek inside and removed the faulty mechanism.
Now i'm left with a problem thought...
You see, the washing machine in question uses "metalflex zv-44g" for a lock, but it's all broekn. Anyway, I thought i could just fix this by shorting the 'common' wire to the 'live' wire. But that also did not work ~ the washing machine refused to start.

 

So my question is really, what am i doing wrong? Any advice is welcome please!
Thank you!

Edited November 25, 2020 by vilian
spelling

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Hello there. Unfortunately all I can advise is that it is very dangerous to bypass the door lock. They appreciate you may consider it okay and that you will be careful but the washing machine door would open at any time and it is operating, especially during high spin. For an engineer to bypass the door lock it would be criminally negligent. If you have definitely connected the correct wires then it would properly bypass the door lock. So if it's still not working it can't be the door lock. If you connect the neutral and common wires together then nothing would happen but if you connect the neutral and live where together I'm sure you know what would happen :-) so either you've accidentally connected the common and neutral all it's not the door lock at fault. If it has three wires there should be a live wire that goes to a coil and a neutral wire that allows the coil to heat up. Once heated up a bimetal strip should then make the connection to the other way that passes power onto the rest of the washing machine.

I do have a good explanation of how a door lock works here How does the washing machine door lock work

[vilian]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that I did all the correct things.

At first, I checked the manual for the error code the machine was displaying.
After I opened the door lock mechanism, the metal that is supposed to connect to the underneath connector when the bimetal strip heats up wasn't making proper conntact. After I scrubbed it off a bit with a sharp box opener, I tested with the multimeter and it was all fine. I put it back together and i tested it out. ~ nothing.
Later i found out that for some reason the bimetal strip is not heating up, even thought it was connected to neutral and live.
So my only solution would  be to bypass the lock. I have no children, so It is of no concern to me. I also do realize and acknowledge  that it is extremly dangerous to do this. However, I do not want to pay 100 bucks for a technician, or else throw the machien away just for this little issue.

Also, I just noticed a few hours ago (before making my previous post), that the resistance across the Live and nutural is 0 ohms (I am talking about the lock, not the wires themselfs). So would that actually mean it's more of circuit failure?

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Hello. If you are capable of bypassing a lock then fitting a new one would be much easier. Have you thought about trying to find a spare part? The problem with having a potentially dangerous appliance in the home is that you never know what circumstances may happen whereby someone who does not know ends up using the washing machine or somehow a child ends up visiting. I appreciate you don't need preaching to but those are the things to bear in mind.

I'm not sure about the resistance across live and neutral. It's not something that as an engineer I've ever measured. I always just measured to see if power was getting to a specific place, or that there is a neutral return to the plug, or across particular parts. 

[vilian]

Your reasons are completely valid, and I respect that.
I also acknowledge that even I despise people who are just outright careless and just do things the easy way and never care about safety.
I'd have to admit that in my intentions I might've just been rushing things and that is very bad and I did not display any sort of reasonability.
I'll just shove the washing machine away until I find a spare part to replace the door mechanism.
I just fear that it might be the circuit board.... oh well, i guess we will see.

Thanks for the advice. I appreciate it.

Kind regards.
Vilian

Edited November 25, 2020 by vilian