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SERVICEMAN’S LOG
Fixing feline follies
Dave Thompson
Some people spend a lot of money on their pets. The pet industry is
massive, with people in the USA alone dropping approximately $110
billion on their fur babies in the last 12 months. My wife and I probably
spent about that on our cats here in New Zealand. One way to save a
little cash is to fix the pet-related gear rather than replace it...
Those in the pet trade know owners will spend whatever
it takes to keep pets safe, entertained and healthy; it seems
nothing is off-limits as far as marketing goes. Now there is
pet insurance, pet funerals, special diets and much more,
all designed to emotionally engage owners.
We are not immune because we want our cats to be
‘happy’ in their lives with us. We think they are (especially
when they want food), but that doesn’t stop us from buying
them treats, toys and other seemingly useless accessories.
The old gag is that cats will typically ignore whatever
came in the box and spend hours playing in that carton
instead. It is, of course, totally accurate. Cats love boxes
and will happily sit in one for hours.
They also love sitting on any papers you might spread out
in front of you, such as a newspaper or a circuit diagram.
I can put a paper kitchen towel on the floor and, within a
minute, a cat will be sitting on it. If only pet-owning life
were always that simple.
Over the years, we’ve purchased many funky ‘toys’ for
our cats. Some are passive devices, like a plastic stick with
a short string and feather arrangement attached to the end,
which we wave about to get their attention (if they are interested). Lately, though, an increasing number of ‘electronic’
toys for pets are showing up at stores around the globe.
The first we bought for our cats was a simple enclosed
plastic track with gaps in it, with a clear plastic ball with
a motion-activated flashing red high-intensity LED inside
that can be ‘batted’ around by an intrigued feline. The ball
sits idle until tapped, then it flashes (apparently enticingly),
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so the cat will maintain interest and swat it until it gets
bored, usually in about two minutes tops.
The good news is that this ‘toy’ was relatively cheap; the
bad news is that once the battery in the ball goes flat, you
have to buy new ones – available as an ‘extra’, of course.
This is a great marketing ploy from the manufacturer, and
as long as the cats remained interested, they could milk
money out of us for years to come (much like the printer
ink business model).
The case of the trapped battery
Now, as a serviceman and electronics guy, having something with an onboard battery that goes flat pretty quickly
and cannot be replaced rails against my code of ethics.
Simply chucking that ‘expired’ ball into the rubbish is
neither green nor kosher (even though the ball is actually
tinted green), so I did what anyone else would do in my
position – I tried to change the battery.
I already knew what type of battery the ball took because
the ball is made of a green-tinged transparent plastic, which
allows the LEDs flashing inside the ball to be seen outside.
The balls are the size of a ping-pong ball and two halves
are joined together – obviously, once the circuit board and
battery-holder assembly are installed – using glue.
I can tell because there is a noticeable seam around the
ball; theoretically, all I’d have to do is open that up, change
the battery and rejoin the two halves together. I say theoretically because they don’t come apart that easily.
It appears that plastic-welding glue is used to close it up
(the kind that dissolves plastic to join it, rather than just
tacking the two bits together), so simply cracking the glue
bead won’t help. They’d obviously thought about this a
lot and intentionally made these things to be consumable
items – another of my pet peeves (pun intended!). Getting
them apart was going to be the challenge.
Anyone who has tried to cut a ping-pong ball in half
will know how incredibly difficult it is to hold something like that while attempting to separate it. I once
used a Dremel jigsaw to bifurcate a ping-pong ball and
feared for my fingers at every step of the process. I’d
likely need to use something like that to crack these
flashing balls open. Still, where there’s a will, there’s
a way.
By this time, many of you are likely eye-rolling and
asking your good selves why I don’t just suck it up and
buy replacements – which, in all honesty, aren’t that
Australia's electronics magazine
siliconchip.com.au
Items Covered This Month
•
The irreplaceable cats and their non-replaceable
batteries
•
•
•
Simpson’s odyssey
Outdoor motion sensor repair
More playthings for pussy-cats
Troubleshooting a cordless lawnmower
Dave Thompson runs PC Anytime in Christchurch, NZ.
Website: www.pcanytime.co.nz
Email: dave<at>pcanytime.co.nz
Cartoonist – Louis Decrevel
Website: loueee.com
expensive. Well, the answer in three words is: The Serviceman’s Curse. I can see the battery inside; therefore, I
must be able to replace it!
The balls ship with one of those really thin transparent
plastic pull-tabs on them, so the battery doesn’t go flat on
store shelves. When you get one, you pull the tag out, which
connects the battery, and off you go. That means there’s a
slot in the seam, and that’s where I started.
I tried the usual spudgers and prying tools, hoping that
the seam would give way and the ball would just pop
open. No such luck. These things were tighter than an
All-Black scrum.
The only way in was to score the seam deeply with a
craft knife – a horrifying task to finger health – followed
by carefully using a modified junior hacksaw blade to cut
around the edge and through to the inside of the ball.
Clearly, I couldn’t just chew through it with a jigsaw
like an empty ping-pong ball, as that would also slice the
innards in half, defeating the purpose of the exercise.
Well, I got it open eventually, but at the expense of
about a millimetre of material cut away by the blade kerf.
Replacing the battery was easy enough – it had a typical
plastic-moulded holder with a spring at one end and a
contact at the other. The battery itself comprised just three
garden-variety SR44 cells in series.
Once the cells were installed, I had
to reconnect the two halves. After
smoothing the ragged hacksaw
cuts and matching the two
halves as best I could, I used
a tiny spot of superglue at
three points around the
circumference to tack
it back together.
The result was
still quite strong,
but time would
tell if it stood up
to the punishment of being
batted about by
cats, when they
could be bothered. Still, I consider it a good
result.
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Theoretically, I can now crack it open easily any time
the battery dies, which is how it worked out. I’ve replaced
the battery in the two balls that came with the toy several
times now, and while we’ll have to replace the balls eventually, at least we’ve gotten some decent use out of these
ones before having to discard them.
Of course, it depends on the cats still being interested!
My wife was buying some items from an online store
recently and came across a ‘chirping’ cat toy that was ‘on
special’. She ordered it, even though all our cats are getting older now and play with toys less. But, on occasion,
especially with a new toy, they will still find that inner
kitten and go mental over something.
This particular toy is like a large plush housefly, with
exaggerated bug eyes and wings. Once again, it came with
one of those plastic pull-tabs to activate the battery, and
when that was removed, just tapping the toy lightly would
result in a chirping sound for a few seconds.
Unusually, our cats loved it straight away. It didn’t say
so on the packaging, but it was probably soaked in catnip,
such was the interest they all showed in it. At all hours of
the day, we’d hear the thing going off, indicating one of
the cats was having fun with it.
Sadly, after a few days, it stopped working altogether.
While the cats occasionally swatted it when walking past,
they soon lost interest.
Being a plush toy, there wasn’t any real way of getting
to the module inside. I could feel it in there, but no sound
came out. The wife played around with it, and suddenly it
started chirping again. So we threw it back to the cats and
it worked as expected for the next few days. But it stopped
working again and this time, no matter what we did, we
couldn’t get it going again.
My wife suggested we just buy another one since the cats
liked it so much, but the Serviceman’s Curse reared its ugly
head again, and I resolved to discover why it had failed.
After looking it over carefully to see how they managed
to embed the module inside and sew it up without any
visible seams, I found a section in the toy’s body with
several tiny clear threads holding it together.
I guessed this was where they’d inserted
the capsule and then sewn it back up.
Like the flashing balls above,
the only way in was to be a bit
destructive. This shouldn’t be
as bad, though; snipping a
few threads is much easier
than cutting a ball in two!
And so it proved to
be. Once I had removed
those clear stitches, I
could spread the outer
material and push the
Dacron packing aside
to reveal the electronic
module. The circular
insert is a well-made
plastic unit about the
size of a small stack of
10¢ pieces, 25 × 18mm
or so.
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October 2022 79
A cover on one end was clipped to the rest at each 120°
point by a small plastic tab, and a small flat screwdriver
bit soon had them loosened.
The PCB inside is tiny and has a small chip-on-board
(COB) IC plus a few ancillary components. Unlike the
balls, which use a very simple arrangement for sensing
movement, this device appears to use some kind of accelerometer within the COB to detect when the toy is moved.
With the PCB out, I could faintly hear chirping when I
tapped the side of the board, indicating that perhaps the
battery had once again gone flat, although, after only a few
days of play, that seemed unlikely.
This device uses even smaller cells than the balls with
two SR421 types mounted in a moulded plastic holder. As
soon as I touched one to extract it, the thing chirped away
merrily, so clearly, the cells were still good.
There were no apparent signs of dry joints or anything
suspicious on the bottom of the PCB, so perhaps it was just
a dodgy connection between the battery and the holder.
After giving the module a good going over and quickly buffing the spring and terminal ends of the battery holder with
my diamond contact file, it seemed to be working reliably.
I reassembled the whole thing and my wife put one
broad stitch in the plush body to seal it up. It still seems
to be going well.
Another toy for the tabbies
Finally, our latest (and possibly our last) online purchase of a cat toy resulted in the frustration of intermittent operation.
This device is about the size of a tennis ball and clamps
via a plastic holder and screw assembly to any windowsill
or similar surface. When a button on the case is pressed,
a fluffy ball on a length of twine-sized string drops out of
the bottom of the unit and randomly rises and lowers using
a spindle inside the device. Think of a bucket rising and
sinking in a water well, and you have the idea.
There is a timer built in that quickly raises and lowers
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the ball at short intervals, hopefully enticing the animal.
If the cat grabs onto the ball, it plays out the length of the
string while the base unit pulls on it with varying strengths
after different delays to keep the pet engaged.
It’s a clever idea, and quite well-implemented. However,
the noise of it working put all our cats off initially – the
motor running backwards and forwards is quite loud. After
a while, though, they got used to it and were hooking into
the fluff ball with gusto.
After a few minutes of inactivity, the ball retreats back
up into the bottom of the base unit, and the device shuts
down. It requires another push of the power button to get it
going again. If we want to stop it, another push of that button also resets the ball back ‘home’ and shuts the toy down.
This device is powered by two AAA cells, accessible
by undoing two screws holding one half of the round
case together. I don’t know why they didn’t put a battery
cover/door in there, but this is still a lot easier than cutting
something open, and they do provide one of those small,
mass-produced, plastic-handled Phillips screwdrivers you
get with many phone-repair kits in the box.
Once again, I couldn’t turn the thing on after a few days.
I knew the cells were good, so something else must have
happened. The switch itself felt odd and didn’t seem to
toggle as well as I thought it should, so there was only one
thing for it: break out the tools.
Getting in was a breeze because it was all just screwed
together. Separating the two halves was as simple as removing the PK screws and cracking it open.
Inside was the spindle, with the string wound on it, a
PCB mounted in the bottom half – again using a COB chip
and a couple of other surface-mounted components – with
some flying leads to a DC motor and the battery holder in
the top half.
The PCB itself was screwed to the bottom half, and the
power switch was mounted directly to that, while the
switch actuator protruded into a plastic button moulding,
allowing it to be toggled from outside the case.
I immediately saw a problem: the case moulding the
switch toggle mounted into was being impeded by a
small piece of plastic ‘flashing’, a product of the injection-
moulding process. Usually, when plastic items are moulded,
any excess material is removed either by machine or hand
before the device is assembled. Unsurprisingly, that process is known as ‘deflashing’.
It is not unusual for stray bits to be either left in the case
or missed in the removal process, only to break away once
the unit is built. Whatever happened here, the switch was
fouled by this thin shard of plastic, so it could not operate
properly. A pair of tweezers soon had it out, and its operation returned to normal.
Repairing such things appears folly, but it goes against
the grain to buy something that doesn’t work correctly,
and for items as cheap as these, especially if they are mail-
ordered, returns are hardly practical. I think it’s always
worth having a look to see what can be done when one of
them goes wrong.
Simpson’s odyssey
B. P., of Dundathu, Qld had such a long saga repairing
a Simpson washing machine that it makes Homer’s Odyssey seem like a brief jaunt and Joyce’s Ulysses look like a
short story...
Australia's electronics magazine
siliconchip.com.au
We have a boneyard at our place where we store old
washing machines. Some are units that we had used previously that had developed unrepairable faults, some are
donor machines for parts, and one or two are machines
that we had been given but hadn’t used yet.
So when our current washing machine stopped working,
I took a look to see whether there were any good replacements.
I found a Simpson Contessa 425 machine under a cover
that looked OK. I noticed that the power cable had been
cut off, but there was a spare cable on top of the machine
that I could use. I would start by fitting the replacement
cable so that I could test it.
The cable enters the machine at the back of the control
panel at the top and is held in by a cable clamp. I removed
the three screws from the back of the panel and lifted the
panel clear to access the inside. I could then pull the cut
cable through from the inside, remove the cable clamp and
fit the replacement cable.
The Masonite back panel was missing, but I would worry
about that after discovering whether the machine worked.
The spin solenoid was burnt out, so I went back to the
boneyard and removed the solenoid from a Simpson 728
machine that I’d repaired years ago, that we’d used until
it developed an unrepairable fault.
With the solenoid fitted, I spun the timer to the spin
cycle and pulled the knob up. The solenoid clunked, but
the motor did not turn. It looked like the motor was faulty,
so I got the one from the 728, as I knew it was good. With
the motor fitted, the machine sprang into life, so I gave it
a good clean.
I looked around to see what I could make a replacement
back panel from and found a sheet of painted ribbed metal. I
cut that to size, drilled mounting holes and fitted the panel.
Then I replaced the two broken feet from another machine
in the boneyard and set the machine up for testing.
My wife ran a load of washing, and she said it was working well. However, the next day, she said that it was not
spinning very well and it would only spin dry half a load.
I suspected that the belt was slipping, which proved to be
the case. I tried to tighten the belt without success, so I
checked my parts box and found two belts of the same size.
One belt looked beefier than the other, so I fitted it, but
it still slipped. Then I noticed that the pulley was badly
worn; it was so thin that it broke off. These pulleys are
nearly impossible to remove to replace, so I would have
to replace the motor (again). I got one from the shed, fitted
it and put the machine back.
The next morning, my wife went to use the machine
and she reported that it would wash but not spin. I knew
the previous motor was good, so I would try to replace the
broken pulley with the one from this motor.
I tried to remove the broken pulley, but it kept breaking more, and in the end, all that was left was the section attached to the motor shaft. I ended up chopping it
off with a chisel. The motor shaft had some rust where
the pulley had been, so I cleaned it up, ready to fit the
replacement pulley.
Now to remove the good pulley from the other
motor without breaking it. After removing the
Allen head grub screw, I found that the pulley
would not budge. I heated the pulley and, prying the pulley up with two screwdrivers and my
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wife hitting a rod on the motor shaft, we finally got the pulley off. I fitted it to the other motor while it was still hot.
I had lunch while the pulley cooled down, then I replaced
the grub screw and fitted the motor to the machine. Now
the machine would not spin. I wondered if the motor might
have been damaged when I’d chopped the broken pulley
off it, so I looked for another motor.
There was a Simpson Delta in the boneyard that we’d
been using until the bowl drive had failed. I plugged it in
and confirmed that motor was good, then I removed the
motor and fitted it to the 425. Well, it still would not spin.
Maybe the capacitor was bad. I used the capacitor from the
Delta, but it still would not spin.
I was starting to suspect the timer, as I thought that
maybe the contacts in it were not making good contact
from the machine being stored for so long outside under
a cover. However, I found that if I rotated the motor pulley by hand on the spin cycle, the motor would turn
slightly. That indicated that the motor was getting power
from the timer.
So what could be causing the machine to wash correctly
but not spin dry? I’d ruled out the motor, the timer and the
capacitor, so what was left? The one component left that
could cause this was the electronic forward-reverse module. But I could not understand how it could wash correctly and initially spin, then not spin at all. It’s a sealed
module, so it is not serviceable.
The module in the Delta was definitely sound, so I
removed it and compared it with the module in the 425.
They looked identical but had slightly different part numbers. One had longer coloured wires, while the other
had shorter white wires. Considering that these washing
machines were very similar, I wondered if the modules
were interchangeable.
I checked the codes on the wires, and they were identical, so I decided to take the chance that the Delta module
would work in the 425. I took careful note of the wiring
and removed the old module.
However, one of the plastic retaining clips broke in the
process. This is not surprising with plastic that must be
well over 20 years old.
I fitted the Delta module, plugged the machine in, turned
the dial to the spin cycle and pulled up the knob. The
machine sprang to life, indicating that the original module was faulty. I was then pretty confident that the ‘suspect’ motors were all actually good. If I needed to replace
a motor in the future, I would check then, but I was not
going to swap any motors just to test them.
Australia's electronics magazine
October 2022 81
To repair the broken clip, I glued a piece of bread tag
onto its side with superglue. I had to attend to something
else, and when I came back, the glue had dried and the
clip was solid. I added a blob of hot-melt glue to reinforce
it, and I added a blob to the other clip too.
I then fully reassembled the machine and set it up,
ready to use again. After a few days, my wife said it was
not spin-drying or pumping out the water. She’d already
bailed out most of the water, so I pulled the machine out,
removed the back and checked the pump. It was jammed,
so I turned the fan by hand and the pump freed up.
These small squirrel cage induction motors have bushes,
not bearings, and after years of use, the lubricant can
harden, causing the pump to stop. With the pump now
free, I pumped out the remaining water and added a few
drops of oil to both ends of the shaft where the bushes are.
I also unscrewed the cap on the end of the pump to check
for debris, but it was clear.
After several weeks of use, the machine was still working
well, but one morning, my wife told me that the machine
would now spin but not wash. I wondered what went
wrong with it this time. I looked in the shed and found
another electronic forward-reverse module, so I decided
to fit that and see what happened. The next day, I got the
same report, but this time the machine still had water in
it, so I could check it.
I spun the timer to the wash cycle and pulled up the knob.
I could hear the water solenoid buzzing, so I suspected
that the pressure switch wasn’t working for some reason.
I removed the front panel and disconnected the pressure
switch’s hose from the machine while leaving it connected
to the switch. To test the switch, I blew into the hose and
heard it make a loud click, indicating that it had been
jammed. Now I could repeatedly blow into the switch hose,
and it seemed to be working, so I expected the machine to
work correctly now.
The following day, the machine performed correctly,
but the day after that, it would not spin. I checked the
motor, and it was blazing hot, so I changed it. I fitted one
of the previous motors that I’d swapped out as suspected
of being faulty, but I later thought it was likely to be good.
Sure enough, it was good, and the machine spun again.
The saga continued, with the machine working for a
couple of days, but now washing but not spinning. Could
the replacement forward-reverse module have failed? I
swapped it back to the Delta one with the short white wires,
and once again, the machine worked correctly.
However, the following day, we were back to the situation of it not washing, but it was spinning. It would seem
that the pressure switch was playing up again.
I knew the pressure switch in the Delta was good, so I
attempted to retrieve it. However, when I tried to remove
the knob, it would not budge, and it took some levering
with two screwdrivers before I got it off. I unscrewed the
pressure switch and took it over to the 425.
I noticed that the switch was not turning freely, but some
grease on the cam and a couple of drops of oil on the shaft
fixed that. I had no problem removing the pressure switch
knob on the 425, so I could then remove the switch.
I screwed the replacement switch in, then swapped the
wires from the old switch to the new switch one by one to
ensure that I plugged all the wires into the correct terminals. That done, I refitted the front panel, and the machine
was ready for testing again. The next morning, my wife
reported that the washing machine was working correctly.
After several months, it’s still working well. This has again
saved us from having to buy another machine.
With new machines costing over $600 and second-hand
machines being hit and miss, I was happy that I’d been
able to get this old Simpson machine working well again.
This is why we keep ‘junk’, to be able to repair other ‘junk’!
The photo below shows the inside of the front panel, with
the pressure switch on the right and the forward-reverse
module on the left. The timer is adjacent to the forward-
reverse module, and the capacitor is located between the
two switches for the water temperature and cycle. When
the panel is refitted, the loose hose in the lower right plugs
onto the pressure switch.
Outdoor motion sensor repair
M. L., of Frenchs Forest, NSW says he likes a challenge.
But sometimes, a job can be so challenging that it leads to
nothing but frustration...
I thought I’d share one of my (bitter) experiences that took
considerable time for me to solve. I had a Clipsal C-Bus
system I installed in my house many years ago. It is still
going strong, but there was a problem with one particular
motion sensor not working for some time.
This Clipsal 5750WPL automation system infrared (IR)
motion sensor would not work at night. It wouldn’t sense
movement, and the respective lights would not switch on.
All the programming was correct, and it was recognised on
the C-Bus network, but it just wouldn’t detect movement
when the light level sensitivity pot was set to full darkness.
Two forward-reverse modules, one from the Simpson
washing machine (left) and a Delta machine (right).
This photo shows the inside of the washing machine’s front ►
panel. On the left is the forward-reverse module and on the
right is the pressure switch.
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Australia's electronics magazine
siliconchip.com.au
The original 5750 installed 20 years ago worked without a hitch, never missed a beat until the seals failed and
it filled with water, so I had to replace it.
I programmed the new unit, walk tested it, then set the
pot to full darkness like the previous unit. I walked away
and didn’t think another thing of it until one night, I went
out to the area where the 5750 should be sensing my movement, and no lights came on.
I checked the programming, and it was all good. The PIR
Enable function was set to Enable via the touchscreen. So
why wasn’t it working?
I re-checked the programming and the terminations. I
spent a considerable time messing around with no success.
It worked fine in daylight mode. I eventually gave up and
decided that I should replace the sensor because the sensing level pot was faulty. Eventually I did, and since my
house was going through renovations that required scaffolding, I waited for the scaffold to come down to replace
the ‘faulty’ unit.
I replaced it, programmed it, did the walk test, and life
was good, so I set the unit to full darkness.
The following night I went out to check if the unit would
pick me up. Nope. Lots of expletives were heard by the
neighbours. The next day, I checked it again in daylight,
and it was working...
There is a camera monitoring the area where the sensor is located. The camera is five metres above the sensor,
under an eave.
This camera has been replaced four times over the years
due to failures. The original cameras were day/night types,
and I used a Jaycar long-range bullet-type IR illuminator
to illuminate the area monitored by the camera at night.
The camera didn’t have built-in IR emitters because it was
a varifocal type.
I removed the Jaycar illuminator when I installed the
third new camera because it had a built-in illuminator, as
do most recent cameras. The illuminators in the latter two
cameras provided more output than the Jaycar unit.
The next day, late in the afternoon, as the light levels
were dropping, I decided to undertake a little experiment
where I adjusted the 5750 light level pot from the daylight
setting a small amount towards total darkness. When the
light level dropped below the sensor hysteresis point, the
light would come on when it sensed my movement.
That is until I got to the full darkness setting, and the
lights would not come on. More expletives. I knocked the
pot back to daylight and bingo! The unit was sensing.
I set the pot to full darkness and no more sensing. At that
point, the light bulb above my head exploded!
It was the !<at>#$^&* camera! The IR emitted by the camera was providing enough reflected (IR) illumination to
stop the sensor from activating.
I tweaked the pot about 5° back towards daylight, and
the 5750 started working again.
So, I figure that the problem must have commenced
around about the time I installed the third camera. The
camera illuminators produced more IR output, but because
I don’t spend much time at night in this area, I didn’t notice
the problem until I had to replace the 5750 sensor.
Also, the electronics in the 5750s were updated to full
surface-mount technology in the early 2000s, so Clipsal
most likely tweaked the sensitivity of the IR detector when
they updated the design, exacerbating the problem.
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I have spoken to several electricians who have had similar problems with other systems sporadically switching
lights and other equipment on. Having described my findings to them, they are looking at the devices installed in
the areas where the problems occur. I bet it’s the IR devices
that are the cause.
Troubleshooting a cordless mower
B. C., is a frequent contributor to Serviceman’s Log; this
time, he has had to repair a Gardenline cordless mower...
This mower had been working reliably for over three
years. However, on this particular day, it went for only about
three metres on a light cut, then the motor stopped running.
Upon pressing the Charge Check pushbutton, the LED
bargraph indicated a fully charged battery. Despite this, I
changed the two 20V lithium-ion battery packs over to the
spare set. But the mower motor still would not run.
So I brought the mower into my workshop and put it on
the bench. I removed the plastic top to reveal a brushless
motor, a controller module and a wiring harness. Googling
the part number on the module nameplate (30070030) came
up with an ALM (China) brand mower.
There was an exploded view and a complete parts list
for this mower. However, this module number was not
available through any eBay or AliExpress sellers. It was
now time to determine whether the motor or the controller module was faulty.
Some further research on the internet came up with this
information on how to test a brushless motor:
1. Short the three motor leads together and check for
resistance when the shaft is rotated by hand.
2. Connect a voltmeter across each winding in turn and
spin up the motor with a cordless drill. It should generate a similar voltage across each phase.
3. Check for a short circuit between the windings and the
stator (body of the motor) using an ohmmeter.
4. Check for an equal inductance for each winding using
an LC meter.
I checked the brushless motor using those steps, and it
passed with flying colours on all four!
So I decided to take a closer look at the controller module circuitry, as it now seemed likely that there was no
output drive to the motor. After removing the module end
caps and the sheet metal sleeve, the PCB and heatsink were
revealed. I then plugged the PCB/heatsink assembly back
into the mower harness.
After pressing the handle operate switch, a surface-
mounted LED near the microprocessor flashed five times,
which I assume was a fault code. This was a welcome sign.
I unplugged the module and removed it for further testing.
Along the back edge of the PCB, I found six HY1707 power
Mosfets. Of these, three (V1A, V1B and V1C) tested faulty!
I ordered ten HY1707 Mosfets via eBay. Upon their
arrival, I replaced them all (including the apparently still
functional V0A, V0B and V0C) for long-term reliability. I
then refitted the module into its case and plugged it back
into the mower harness. After pressing the operate switch,
the motor ran again!
The mower has now been going properly for over three
months since the module repair. Perhaps the failure was
due to overloading in the past when trying to cut heavier
grass, resulting in incipient damage, which made it finally
give up the ghost later.
SC
Australia's electronics magazine
siliconchip.com.au
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