I have one of the famous Samsung side by side friges that is a piece of junk. It is now 2 years old and after it was one year old, the evap coil in the frige side began to freeze up with ice and the frige got to 59deg. After months of service companies attempting to fix it, the main PCB was replaced and all was fine until a few days ago. The same situation is happening again. Now no one here will service the Samsung because they complain they get no support from the factory for advice or parts. In the mean time, I have become very familiar with how to take it apart and hair dryer melt the ice and put it all back togther again. Not wanting to do this anymore, I need some suggestions to help me solve this problem for good. I have the service manual for the machine and the schematic. It is the adaptive defrost and is controlled by the main control board,for the entire unit, no auxilliary deforst board. I want to bypass the digital ckts that are always going bad and wire in the old mechanical type defrost timer but I don’t know how to get one to do what needs to be done.
When the coil was iced, I applied 110vac to the defrost heater,which is a metal tube interlaced with the evap coil, and it took 11 minutes for the ice to melt away. Any timers that I have been looking for on the net are 25mins. Is that going to be too long? I need to do something because I am not going to put it out on the street like so many others that have given up on Samsung. This piece of junk cost too much.
I would think it should be OK.
The defrost thermostat will turn the defrost heater off once the ice is gone.
Since you know how long it takes the unit to ice up this should help you decide in a timer. They can differ some as to how often they run a defrost cycle.
Your main pc board controls the compressor also. It would not be a good idea to run it with a defective board, you run the risk of other failures. Also, your condensing and evaporator fans are probably dc, not ac controlled.
I would just replace the main pc board and add a 1000 joule surge protector to the outlet, should prevent pc board burnouts.
I agree with richappy.
Wiring this in could be a pain.
[FONT=Arial]I have a surge protector on it already and the main board has them at the AC input connector. I don’t believe that surges are the culprit. It is another poorly designed piece of imported junk that looks good on paper but doesn’t perform and we consumers are stuck with the bill. If the other forum was still active, you would see how many people could not get their unit repaired and just got another brand. That is intolerable to flush $1600 down the drain because people can’t get a service company to fix it. I have two main boards that have gone bad so far and there is no guarantee that Samsung has addressed the problem with any fixes.
So I should just feed the repair people money until I get fed up with how much more I have spent and have gotten no positive results? There is no one in a 70 mile radius that will touch Samsung. Two companies laughed when I mentioned Samsung.
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I would suggest you search Google for a repair co. that fixes pc boards, worth a try, don’t know which co’s are the best but you can re-post your problem asking for co’s that are good.
[FONT=Arial]You are absolutely correct.
When you buy a fridge and then have to put a surge protector on the line as a precaution against voltage spikes it tells me that the unit itself has design problems.
I am not an engineer but would like to get my hands around the throats of a couple of them because it is obvious that they do not have a clue how to isolate electronic components from motor and heater spikes when they are turned on and off.
Today it is rare indeed to find a recall or a no charge fix for anything unless a couple houses burn down. Companies just do not seem to care if their products have longevity. The mind set seems to be sell it, forget it and move on to the next customer. Also many service departments now make a higher profit margin than the manufacturing side of the business so a few service calls is not a bad thing for the bottom line.
They design to get a good Energy Star rating. You buy it with the idea that it will save you a few bucks in energy cost while also helping the environment and then junk it in 5 years because of problems. Would be nice if the Energy Star included the energy that is used to produce the unit and the parts to keep it running rated by lifetime. Then the unit that lasts 15 years but uses more energy per year would get a better rating than the 5 year junker.
The service companies may actually be doing you a favor by not fixing it, they know that they will be back in the not too distant future and they will have to face an irate customer.
This is an over designed poorly thought out piece of you know what.
I know that the above is absolutely useless when it comes to help but wanted to let you know that I also feel your frustration.
All I can recommend is get on the net and yell loud and clear on every site you can find that this is crap. Who knows if enough people yell it may make a difference or at least save others. A good example of this is the Maytag Neptune washer fiasco.
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I worked as an electronic engineer for over 20 years and most of the companies I worked for had a good failure analysis department and I observed life tests on systems I worked on.
However, there where places I worked at that ignored engineering protests and produced stuff that used cheap parts or systems without rigorous testing before design completion.
I complained to upper management to no avail except to be put on the “problem” employee list. My last job was working at an Air force base where I saw that they did care about “problems”.
I can’t say who is to blame in this case, but I am sure it is not only engineering who is at failt, but the entire company.
[FONT=Arial]I have a backround in electronics for over 40 years and I have decided to make an electronic circuit to do what is needed for the defrost operation and bypass the faulty control from the micro processor on the PBA Main board. Looking at http://tinyurl.com/pnaopl is the schematic for the unit. Outlined in a red box is the relay controls for the compressor and defrost heaters. One side of the relay coils are tied to +12vdc. the other side of a coil is connected to an IC (relay driver) that gets it signals from the processor. I plan on opening (cutting) the three IC pins that run to the relays and insert a digital timing circuit that will (energize the original relays) to run the compressor for 12 hours, then run disable the compressor and turn on the defrost heaters in the frige and freezer for a time that I haven’t determined yet.. Then repeat the cycle… just like the old mechanical defrost timers did every 12 hours.
This diagram shows essentially what I want to do. http://tinyurl.com/o4vmfw
Denman, I appreciate your last response. It made me feel better that someone understands. If you remember on the other (closed now) forum, I went through an ordeal on the phone with Samsung and as usual they deny having any issues with anything they make but they did extend my initial one year warranty for three months so that the repairs would be covered. The person I spoke with was sympathetic and I could tell that he had heard this all before.
Richappy, I don’t think this Samsung frige ever had a design review or someone would have caught this unstable problem. Fortunately the rest of the frige operations always work fine.
The thing I don’t know is how long to energize the defrost heaters. I found that 11 minutes removed the blocks of ice that were on the bottom of the evap. Since there is no bi-metal defrost thermostat in this circuit because a thermistor is used to alert the processor when to terminate the defrost cycle, I need to know what max temperature is acceptable for a defrost heater. I don’t want to melt any plastic. The defrost heater is an aluminun tube type that is interleaved in the evaporator coils as one assy. I could add a bi-metal in series but I have found that they all look similar but they range in price from over $8 to over $40. Why is there such a range in price?
I’m open to suggestions. I just can’t leave the frige like it is now, not know when it will act up again.
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It seems common to have a cut out at 55 and cut in at 30. The placement on the evaporator is important to make sure it doesn’t cut out too soon or too late. I don’t know why one would be so much more expensive unless it’s because some have a wiring harness with a plug on the end.
A 9 dollar GE termination thermostat should work fine WR50X50 cuts out at 50 degrees.
With your other project, how will you control the fridg. temperature. And you still need to control DC evaporator and condensing motors.
I personally would not do this, you will still have electronics that could fail!
This is the type of project that I would also be tempted to try but in this case the project may turn into a career.
When in defrost you will also have to turn off the evaporator fans or it will blow the hot air into the freezer/fridge.
Looks like they monitor the motor RPM so you would have to fake the unit into believing the motor is still running, otherwise it may go into an error mode and lock the unit up.
OR
Do they also look at the RPM when in defrost and if it sees the motor still running does it flag an error in which case you cannot fake it.
The defrost heaters are low wattage so turning both fresh food and freezer on at the same time should not be a problem, looks like it will pull about 3 amps.
Kudos to Samsung for lowering the energy consumption, it is just a minor inconvenience that the evaporator has to be replaced if the heater burns out. What kind of goof would even think of something like that!!!
The problem is figuring out what the feed backs are and how they are using them. They have a lot of thermistors in this thing it is hard to tell how they are processing the readings and what they are using them for.
Looks like the freezer defrosts every 12 to 24 hours and the fresh food every 6 to 12, so a timer that does a defrost every 8 to 10 hours for 20 or so minutes with a defrost thermostat shutting off the heater when it is clear of ice should work.
I am assuming the other heaters in the unit are operating correctly.
In spite of all the above!!!
I think this could end up being a long term endevor and if you have to rely on this as your only fridge it may be best to bite the bullet and put another board into it, as long as you are sure it is the board. Looks like it is approximately $65.00
Save your bills, if they sold lots of these there may be a class action suit in the future.
Please consider this: Samsung sideXside has a fundamental design flaw.
The area in the fridge where the condensor is has no drain at all to let
out the water. Maybe you engineers and electronics experts can explain this old-fashioned method away by telling me that you can generate
dry heat and evaporate all the moisture , but I don’t think I’ll buy it.
In other words, the Samsung problem may not be solved with electronics.
I added a drain hole to mine and a tube to route melted water out of the unit to a drain pan.
Anyone care to comment on the sealed off coils with no drain on the
Samsung Twin Cooling style units ?
[quote=jay1028;85308]I have one of the famous Samsung side by side friges that is a piece of junk. It is now 2 years old and after it was one year old, the evap coil in the frige side began to freeze up with ice and the frige got to 59deg. After months of service companies attempting to fix it, the main PCB was replaced and all was fine until a few days ago. The same situation is happening again. Now no one here will service the Samsung because they complain they get no support from the factory for advice or parts. In the mean time, I have become very familiar with how to take it apart and hair dryer melt the ice and put it all back togther again. Not wanting to do this anymore, I need some suggestions to help me solve this problem for good. I have the service manual for the machine and the schematic. It is the adaptive defrost and is controlled by the main control board,for the entire unit, no auxilliary deforst board. I want to bypass the digital ckts that are always going bad and wire in the old mechanical type defrost timer but I don’t know how to get one to do what needs to be done.
When the coil was iced, I applied 110vac to the defrost heater,which is a metal tube interlaced with the evap coil, and it took 11 minutes for the ice to melt away. Any timers that I have been looking for on the net are 25mins. Is that going to be too long? I need to do something because I am not going to put it out on the street like so many others that have given up on Samsung. This piece of junk cost too much.[/quote]
[FONT=Arial]Wow, never knew that the fans would be off during defrost. They look like they have a tachometer output that the processor monitors.
From the manual:
1-3) When the motor rpm is in 600∼700, it will stop automatically and it tries to resume after 10 seconds. If the motor is not working properly after 5 time trials, it will rest for 10 minutes, then try to resume again. This process will be done continuously.
Note) If there is an abnormal situation for the motor, the self-diagnostics will show the corresponding LED segment.
If defrost cycle is is longer than 10 minutes, looks like it will just ‘resume’ I don’t know what they mean by resume. Too bad the tach signal just wasn’t a logic level. If it wasn’t so hard to get to the back of the unit and remove the board, I would try some experimenting.
I have found some new boards that may be available. One has a label that reads ‘2004 Lowes’ and the other reads A-Top. Mine is labeled ‘2005 Lowes’. Any guesses what the difference is? Maybe the 2004 board was more reliable than the two 2005s I’ve gone through. Also, found boards with different letter at end of part number. Mine is a W (DA41-00104W ), have seen R , V , and M in place of W. Maybe these are different rev levels? Anyone know? Maybe one of these never had the problem.
I must be the lucky few that the frige evap coil does have a drain hole under it.
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Any ideas concerning the letters in the part number from my last post above?? I have decided to buy another board since the fans are going to present a situation I don’t think I can resolve. I found boards from $60 to $195. Wow, what a range.
Anyone know what A-Top means?
While waiting for the new PBA Main (motherboard) for the RS267LASH, I read through the service manual and have located a procedure for manually get the frige section to enter the defrost mode and melt the ice blocks that are blocking airflow from the evaporator fan and causing the frige to go to 59 degrees. See this link for excerpt from service manual:
http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg52/jay1047/samdefrostmode.jpg
One my frige, I press the two buttons shown in the figure for 8 seconds and then press the Freezer Temp button two times. This forces the defrost operation to begin. The compressor will be heard to shut down as normal in defrost mode. You will hear beeping all during the defrost process and it took my frige 15 minutes to complete the defrost and then 10 minutes after that, the compressor started up as normal. After a few minutes, the frige returned to the 40 degree setting I had it programmed for.
The service manual is here: www.[B]service[/B]matters.com/maytag_library/docs/SAM0060.pdf
This will save you from having to power the frige down and remove the three food compartments and remove all the screws and cabling to remove the panel covering the evaporator coil. I am having to do this every day now since the motherboard is not performing its function to do this automatically every 12-24 hours as stated in the service manual. You can tell if your evaporator coil may be frozen by opening the frige door and holding the door switch (on the right inside of the frige) pressed in for 20 seconds and hold your hand near one of the vents inside the rear of the frige. If no cold air comes out, and you can hear the fan running, there is a good chance the coil is iced up. This may not solve everyone’s problem, but I just wanted to let people know how to keep the fige going until you can get the defrost problem resolved. If you have a display panel similar to the one pictured, it may be worth a try since the frige is not cooling anyway.
[quote=jay1028;85308]I have one of the famous Samsung side by side friges that is a piece of junk. It is now 2 years old and after it was one year old, the evap coil in the frige side began to freeze up with ice and the frige got to 59deg. After months of service companies attempting to fix it, the main PCB was replaced and all was fine until a few days ago. The same situation is happening again. Now no one here will service the Samsung because they complain they get no support from the factory for advice or parts. In the mean time, I have become very familiar with how to take it apart and hair dryer melt the ice and put it all back togther again. Not wanting to do this anymore, I need some suggestions to help me solve this problem for good. I have the service manual for the machine and the schematic. It is the adaptive defrost and is controlled by the main control board,for the entire unit, no auxilliary deforst board. I want to bypass the digital ckts that are always going bad and wire in the old mechanical type defrost timer but I don’t know how to get one to do what needs to be done.
When the coil was iced, I applied 110vac to the defrost heater,which is a metal tube interlaced with the evap coil, and it took 11 minutes for the ice to melt away. Any timers that I have been looking for on the net are 25mins. Is that going to be too long? I need to do something because I am not going to put it out on the street like so many others that have given up on Samsung. This piece of junk cost too much.[/quote]
PUT GEFROST THERM. IN LINE WITH HEATER WILL CUT HEATER OFF
It finally beat me. The stinking Samsung fridge won. I spent over $100 on ******** for a new board and spent all day since 9AM try to get the new board to work. The darn new board they sent won’t even turn the conpressor on. After defrosting with the hairdryer and getting into the back and replacing the board, all I did was watch the temperatures rise and listen to the fans blow.
Eventually I put the old board back in and got the unit to cool again, but will not defrost in the frige. As in my previous post, I manually put it into deforst, with the front panel controls, but it really wasn’t defrosting anything. The relays check out OK, so the CPU just isn’t putting out the signal eventhough it tells you it is.
We will have to get another brand to replace this two year old piece of impirted junk. I am worn out.
Can anyone reccommend a side x side brand that they have had good experience with. Mayvbe one that doesn’t have any eletronics.
I am not joining the ranks of the thousands of people that can’t get their Samsung repaired and have to purchase another brand.
It has been working now for over a week and if it wasn’t fixed, it would have normally froze up in two days. After getting the last motherboard in the mail (PBA Main), I monitored the out put pin of the CPU that controls the defrost relay that controls the defrost heater. After forcing the fridge into defrost mode via the front control panel, the CPU put out a defrost signal and then 15 seconds later, the signal (+5v) went low. So the CPU was working but something was telling the CPU to terminate the defrost cycle. After running down the list of resistance readings for the thermistors, it was found that one was reading 2.1k (over 120deg). Since the fridge was still cold, that could not be correct. It turned out the sensor was located in the fridge section and attached to the evaporator. It was sending a signal back to the CPU that the defrost cycle was over and to terminate the defrost heater power.
That particular sensor of course was NLA (no longer available). Looking at the parts list table in the service manual, all the sensors had the same specification (502AT,PX-41C). I found some of those parts and ordered a few to keep as spares as they were only about $6. After the parts came in the mail, I cut out the old thermistor, soldered in the new one and used shrink tubing to splice in the new one that was supplied with a different length cable. The fridge had been working ever since.
I hope that this will help some of you that have these Samsung thermistors. The one that went bad was encased in a soft housing. The new ones are in a hard, epoxy type housing but are identical in size and mounting. This may have been the problem all along instead of the motherboard.
[quote=jay1028;104484]It has been working now for over a week and if it wasn’t fixed, it would have normally froze up in two days. After getting the last motherboard in the mail (PBA Main), I monitored the out put pin of the CPU that controls the defrost relay that controls the defrost heater. After forcing the fridge into defrost mode via the front control panel, the CPU put out a defrost signal and then 15 seconds later, the signal (+5v) went low. So the CPU was working but something was telling the CPU to terminate the defrost cycle. After running down the list of resistance readings for the thermistors, it was found that one was reading 2.1k (over 120deg). Since the fridge was still cold, that could not be correct. It turned out the sensor was located in the fridge section and attached to the evaporator. It was sending a signal back to the CPU that the defrost cycle was over and to terminate the defrost heater power.
That particular sensor of course was NLA (no longer available). Looking at the parts list table in the service manual, all the sensors had the same specification (502AT,PX-41C). I found some of those parts and ordered a few to keep as spares as they were only about $6. After the parts came in the mail, I cut out the old thermistor, soldered in the new one and used shrink tubing to splice in the new one that was supplied with a different length cable. The fridge had been working ever since.
I hope that this will help some of you that have these Samsung thermistors. The one that went bad was encased in a soft housing. The new ones are in a hard, epoxy type housing but are identical in size and mounting. This may have been the problem all along instead of the motherboard.[/quote]
i replace the therm. fuse this took care of problem hope this helps someone elese
