Electrical vs Mechanical 

What do I mean when I say “Grasping the right mindset?”

Appliances are electro-mechanical machines. What this means is, we use electricity to control a mechanical process. Ergo, “electro-mechanical.”

Electrical energy is our voltage (AC or DC) used to drive a load. This also includes amps and current and wattage, but we’ll explore that later when we dive into Ohm’s Law.

Mechanical Energy is the mechanical process driven by that electricity. Consider a drain pump. Its purpose is to pump water out and it generally does this by spinning an impeller. That impeller spinning pushes water out the tube and into the house plumbing (or all over the floor if you forgot to put it back in the standpipe). Electricity alone is not pushing the water out.

So, since appliances use electricity to generate a mechanical action, they are therefore electro-mechanical devices.

But how does this play into the mindset?

When you are called out to an appliance that is not working, one of the first things we want to do (after verifying the complaint) is to determine if we’re dealing with an electrical failure or a mechanical failure. This is important because if we’re facing a mechanical issue, we’re wasting time chasing down voltage.

Scenario

Scenario: You’re called out to a belt drive top load washing machine. The customer says their clothes come out soaking wet. Since you’re new to the field, you do some basic research but you’re not too sure what to look for. At the service call, you jump the lid switch and start a cycle. You see the unit fill with water and then you hear the motor kick on and it whirrs to life, kicks off, whirrs back to life, kicks off again, whirrs back to life, and so on, but the tub is not moving back and forth. You advance the timer and the drain pump kicks on and all the water drains out, then you hear the motor kick back on and it has a constant whirr.

Question: Based on the findings above, do you think we’d be going in at this looking for an electrical failure, or a mechanical failure?

Answer: Mechanical

Debrief: A valuable asset you will come to learn with appliance repair is to take note of what the appliance is doing, and what it isn’t doing. You could be brand new to the appliance repair field and know nothing about appliances, but from the above scenario, you should be able to determine that:

1. the unit is likely getting proper voltage (the timer activates loads), 
2. the timer works (when advancing it, the various loads kicked on and off), 
3. the fill valves work (it filled with water), 
4. the drain pump worked (it drained the water), and
5. we can reasonably conclude that the motor works, since it whirred and died as expected in agitation, and that it stayed on as expected in spin mode. But … our basket didn’t spin.

That said, all of our loads appear to be functioning, so we’d likely approach this with the assumption of a mechanical failure. And in this case, we’d be correct—the belt has broken. By using deduction and observation, we can determine that all the electrical loads responded as expected when energized, but the mechanical action—the tub spinning—was missing. In this scenario, we can set the meter aside and inspect the belt and pulley, as the issue will likely become immediately apparent.

While in that scenario the issue is pretty straightforward, not all repairs will be. You’ll sometimes find a combination of electrical and mechanical failures that will cause the failure.

Computer Controlled Appliances

Part of the difficulty we as appliance repair technicians face in today’s world is that appliances are becoming more computer-centric. It’s not uncommon to find some refrigerators with 3 or 4 different control boards. And despite common belief, sometimes the logic for the fridge isn’t even in the main board. How can we possibly diagnose refrigerator issues if we don’t know what controls what? Then you introduce AC and DC loads and circuits … Fear not, as you will come to learn throughout your learning experience, most problems can be reduced if you know what to look for. The goal of this training is to train you in what to look for.

Prepping For The Service Call

Another thing I want to go over in this Mindset module is the information you’re provided. I have worked for myself and I have worked for appliance repair companies. When I worked for myself, I spoke with all my customers and was able to ask clarifying questions to better prepare myself before arrival. This led to higher “First Call Completes” (when you get the unit fixed on the first call). When I worked for an appliance repair company, however, I was often dispatched to calls with descriptions such as “Washer isn’t working.” I would arrive, the customer would be away and someone else would be there who knew nothing about what was going on with the washer. And the washer would seem to be working fine.

As I will continuously preach, appliance repair is not something you’re going to learn overnight. It’s not something that you’ll feel 100% confident with after taking this course. I’ve been repairing appliances for a while now and still lack confidence, but I stick to my systems and processes and they tend to get the job done.

If you have the luxury of a good “Customer Complaint,” you can do a fair amount of pre-diagnostics before you even arrive. But what does this entail?

Scenario

Scenario: You receive a dispatch. Complaint is that the washing machine is not draining and there is still water in the tub. You are provided with the model number.

Approach: Our first instinct would of course be a failed drain pump. And we would not be wrong in this assumption. However, the last thing you want is to replace a part just to have the same issue occur. This frustrates you and it makes you look bad in front of the customer. Happens all the time when you don’t make checks and prove the component has failed, but the one question we can ask ourselves is this: “How can I prove it? How can I prove the drain pump is faulty and is the part that needs to be replaced?”

The “How can I prove it?” question is what I consider the most important question we should ask ourselves before replacing any given component.

So, before we even arrive at the house, we need to come up with a game plan. Our washer is not draining. We’ve got the model number, so at minimum we can ensure we’re arriving with a drain pump. But is that all we should do in preparation? No! What happens if you quote the repair to the customer for a drain pump replacement and they agree, you replace the drain pump and the unit still won’t drain? You check for voltage and it’s not getting it. You check again at the board, and it’s not sending it. Now you quote the customer a new board, and they become irate because you quoted them $250 for the repair, now you’re saying it’s $550!? You’re a scam artist, a crook, they’ll say.

This is where we as appliance repair technicians stand out amidst the DIY enthusiasts. We take the model number and we download the tech sheet. We look at how the drain pump gets its line voltage and it’s neutral. We figure out the resistance value on the drain pump. We determine what type of amperage it should pull. We figure out the test points. We figure out how to activate the drain pump without waiting for that time to come in a cycle. And when we arrive, we jump right to it. 

When we arrive, the first thing we do: We verify the complaint because customers are notoriously unreliable. There is water in the tub. Drain pump will not kick on. Since we know the drain pump is getting its line and neutral from the board, we don’t have to immediately figure out how to drain the unit to get access to the pump. We pop the top cover back and zero in on the drain pump connection. We disconnect the connector and check resistance on the drain pump wires. It shows 20Ω. Whoa there … if the drain pump was bad, I’d expect to see an open line. Since we already know how to activate diagnostics and manually activate the drain pump, we plug the connector back in, activate the drain pump and check for voltage. 0 VAC shows up on your meter, but the display says the drain pump should be on. Looks like we’ve got a bad board.

Debrief: That was a bit long winded, but I feel it exemplifies how prepping for a call could save you a lot of headache. In that instance, we did bare minimal disassembly and figured out the cause of the problem. Inversely, we could have manually drained the entire tub of putrid smelling water and gained access to the drain pump, and replaced it, wiped the sweat away from our forehead and called the customer in to let them know the great news – their washer is fixed, like new. They would have pulled out their payment as you run it through a test cycle, just to have it not drain again. That right there has always been the pinnacle of embarrassment for me, and such examples are precisely why I have worked very hard to craft this training program to instill into you processes that will prevent such an outcome. Not saying it’s not going to happen to you … it will, but not as often.

Verify The Complaint

I simply cannot stress this enough. You must VERIFY THE COMPLAINT before you start any diagnostics. Customers are often absolutely, irrefutably unreliable when it comes to telling you what is wrong with their appliance. If they knew what was wrong, it’s unlikely that they’d be calling you. If they knew what was wrong, they’d call you up and tell you to bring a new drain pump. (Some customers will do just that … and those are the customers you should avoid.)

We’re going to go into this in more depth in later modules, but here is a common scenario in which a customer proves themselves unreliable.

Scenario

Scenario: My dryer isn’t heating.

Approach (without verifying the complaint): You did your due diligence and came equipped with a new heating element and thermal fuses and a solid understanding of how the heating circuit works. You know your test points, but more importantly, you know nine times out of ten it’s one of the three parts you arrived with.

You unplug the unit from the wall and rip the unit apart like a true pro. You get to the heating element and whip out the meter and test the fuses and the heating element for resistance. Nothing open and all appears to be good. That initial drive and fervor drops and you sit there for a moment, scratching your head. You get a spark of genius and you jump the door switch and the belt switch and test for voltage at the heating element. 240 VAC. Everything tests good … but the customer said it wasn’t heating. You put the unit back together and start a cycle. After a moment, you open the door and sure enough, there’s heat. Your initial thought is that nothing is wrong with the unit, maybe the customer didn’t hit start or something. You let the unit run and it still heats. You peer behind the unit and notice a crushed vent. 

Debrief: Had we taken a moment before to verify the complaint before going Rambo on it, we would have seen that the unit was indeed heating. This would have directed our focus to possibly an airflow issue rather than ripping the unit apart and putting it back together.

In this scenario, the only issue with the unit was a crushed vent—caused by someone pushing the dryer back too far. The restricted airflow led to the cycling thermostat heating up too quickly, causing it to shut off and stay off longer. At the end of the cycle, the clothes were still wet. Ergo, the customer assumed the unit was not heating. (More on that later.)

Summary

As you learn more about appliance repair and gain more experience, you’ll get better and better at determining what approach to take and you’ll create systems that will guide your diagnostic approach. These systems are not ones that can be taught, they can only be learned, crafted and honed as you gain more experience.

The other piece of advice I will give you is to get as much information from the customer as you can. Again, as you learn more, you will learn more relevant questions to ask that will clue you into what is going on. Oftentimes a customer will unknowingly omit a key piece of information that will point you to the problem, and it’s your job to get that information.

When you have the right mindset going into a repair, you will know the right questions to ask.