General > General Technical Chat
Maytag is so cheap that they can't even install some circuit protection.
floobydust:
It was a pretty hot arc to melt and notch out the steel cover :o
EE's expect the HSI to be a resistor and there is huge pressure to keep costs dirt cheap. There is no igniter fuse even on other appliances that use them such as furnaces. They usually just crack and go open circuit. Unless here there was a mains transient that started that arc or the porcelain holder is defective?
Something has to be the fuse however, or else a circuit board fire can occur. These boards are designed right to the penny unfortunately.
Newer appliance boards are adding a deliberate short skinny PCB trace as a fuse, because it doesn't add cost. I guess that is better than nothing.
I would report the incident to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission they have other Maytag recalls fire related as well. Mostly law firms looking for material for lawsuits and class actions go there.
BILLPOD:
If they're used a pukka fuse, wouldn't the non-experienced user still end up buying a new board? The old one wouldn't work and the fix would be electrically the same, but perhaps the fault would be less obvious. :scared:
Check the fuse
To check the fuse of your Pukka, remove the battery :-//
floobydust:
You're right a fuse would stop major smoke/fire but the repair bill still involves a callout, board swap anyway due to a fuse being non user-replaceable. Oh yeah it's (stove) in a metal enclosure, the flaming burning board... house should be ok, open a window, who cares? Seems to be the mindset - no range manufacturer has any fuses on the boards.
Appliances are pretty much disposable now, a control board is either unobtainium or several hundred bucks. Just go buy a new appliance, consumers are made of unlimited cash.
OP needs a new board and igniter, plus labour for repair time. It's a lot of money households don't have nowadays.
Whirlpool Corp... annual revenue of approximately $21 billion 78,000 employees... Their management team believing cheap is the way to succeed, in the midst of Korean and chinese appliance mega-conglomerates on their heels.
schmitt trigger:
Its a race to the bottom which the Asian brands, regardless of the products they manufacture, always seem to win.
Eventually, the Western brands give up and either close the factories and sell their assets. The Asian brands sweep the ashes and from then on they have the market for themselves.
james_s:
People have been treating appliances as disposable for 20+ years now, it's not all the fault of the manufacture, labor is just too expensive vs what it costs to buy a new one, and average people being the way they are, it's common to replace perfectly working appliances simply because the cosmetic styling is out of fashion.
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