50hz French-made Brandt washer

Nov 01, 2005 4 Replies
E

A few years ago, when there were no tumblers availabe yet in the US market, I had imported a French-made washing machine (Brandt) to the US for energy and space-saving purposes. The machine was designed to work in 220V/50hz and N. America has 110V/60hz. And as a mechanical engineer, I was naive to think that as long as I had a 220V outlet in my house, the worst scenario would only be that the machine runs a little faster (20%) which amounts to 24 minutes in a 120-min wash cycle.



Well, as it turned out, the machine runs a lot faster. The timing knob finished a 120-min cycle in something like 6 minutes. The wash, drain, rinse and spin all were cut short within each function. To this day, I am still puzzled and not able to solve the problem. If anyone could shed any light on this subject, I would greatly appreciate it.



The only other possible cause would be a defective timer which could have been assembled with fewer gear sets than ought to be. But without knowing for sure the root of the problem, it doesn't make sense for me to invest another $100 to buy a timer from oversea with no English service manual available.



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P

Here is a suggestion:

Disconnect the timer motor and wire a suitable relay in its place. Then wire the relay to switch the supply to a cheap, low power 50Hz inverter

- which then drives the timer motor. Somewhat cheaper than 100 USD add with the added bonus that the timer will run at the right speed.

I have been puzzling over why it should run so fast - but find the idea of the wrong gears a bit difficult to believe. I'll sleep on it. 'Course it could just be you are paying the imp at piece-work rates*...

__

HTH Sue

*Apologies to Terry Pratchett
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B

Do the wash, drain, rinse and spin cycles also run faster not only in less time, but more rpm's? Just a thought, but maybe the designers used some sort of electronic tachometer to count rpm's and use that parameter as a timing function.

Having lived in France for a time, I've found it to be not a good idea to make seemingly easy assumptions about how 50 Hz equipment will perform on a 60 Hz and vice-versa.

Beachcomber

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Just an educated guess: Since the timer's motor is now running 20% fast, it may have too much inertia and overshoot the 'stop the timer' cam!

(No, the timer is NOT supposed to run all the time. At certain positions it should stop, until a certain condition (water level, temperature) starts it again, IIRC¹

¹) Memory is fad> Do the wash, drain, rinse and spin cycles also run faster not only in

Not likely, since 99% european-made washers use DC motors! (and the AC motor rarities often have a variable frequency drive on-board, to meet the speed control demands of spoilt european buyers)

IF the machine in question has a tacho, it certainly won't be used for anything but the (motor) speed controller.

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A copy of the schematic can be found at the following link, courtesy of Sam Goldwasser,

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Also this question is posted at the sci.electronics.repair group if anyone is interested.

Thanks.

Esther

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