Crock-pots quickly gained popularity and became assistants to the housewives, greatly facilitating their daily tasks. One or another model of this appliance harmoniously complemented the interior of almost every kitchen. Unfortunately, like any other equipment, the multicooker is subject to various kinds of breakdowns. What to do if such a nuisance happened? Is it possible to solve the problem yourself or do I need to go to a service center? The reader will find answers to these questions in this article.
The device must be operated correctly.
So that you do not have to repair multicookers with your own hands, you need to take care of the proper use of this useful household appliance.
This mainly concerns the sequence of placing products in the multicooker.
First you need to put them in a removable bowl, and only then this capacity can be installed in the device.
Whether it is a Scarlett appliance or a Polaris crock-pot, do-it-yourself repairs may be necessary if you put the products directly inside without removing the bowl:
- If, according to the recipe of a particular dish, you need to add milk or another liquid substance to it, it is likely that it will get on the electronics due to the inaccuracy of the cook.
- Sooner or later, you can forget to insert a removable bowl into the appliance and pour something directly into the multicooker. Thus, the device is waiting for an imminent breakdown.
Multicookers "Redmond": do-it-yourself service
Take the device to a service or repair a Redmond multicooker with your own hands?
Not being a specialist, it is worth undertaking maintenance of household appliances only if the warranty repair period has already passed and there is nothing to lose.
But even in this case, you can, of course, take the device for repair and pay a professional for the work.
If you still have to act on your own, then you need to analyze what kind of problem happened with the multicooker. And they are:
- The display shows an error marked as “E1”, “E2”, “E3”.
- Chips, resistors, or capacitors can fail.
- The thermistor could fail.
- The power supply may burn out.
- The heating element often burns out.
- The latch on the cover may break.
To repair a Redmond multicooker with your own hands, you need to understand which of the problems happened to her.
How to get to the board
To repair multicookers with your own hands, you first need to figure out how to get to the board in each case.
To do this, unscrew the three or four screws that are located on the bottom cover.
Then the loop (a set of thin wires) is disconnected, which connects the board to the power supply.
After that, disconnect the heating element, which is fixed with three or four screws and a pressure plate.
Particular attention should be paid to disconnecting the built-in thermocouple (thermometer) located in the center of the device. This element is fragile, it is easy to damage.
The next step, which involves repairing multicookers with their own hands, is to check the fuses. For this, a device called an ohmmeter is used.
Before cleaning the control and power boards, they must be carefully disconnected, otherwise it will not be possible to clean them on both sides.
Board cleaning
If the Polaris multicooker breaks down, do-it-yourself repair requires caution: the internal parts and loops are very thin, they can be accidentally damaged when disassembling the device.
So, the board is removed. To clean it, you need to choose a brush with soft bristles, similar to a cosmetic brush for the face. Inspect the board for grease stains. If they are, wrap cotton on a toothpick, soak it in alcohol and gently wipe the contaminated area, being careful not to exert excessive pressure on the board.
You need to approach the process with caution and responsibility, otherwise the repair of multicookers with their own hands can end in failure. Change the cotton wool after each stroke, otherwise you just smear the fat on the chips and capacitors.
Board Diagnostics
A typical multicooker, such as Scarlett or Maxwell, has two electronic circuit boards. One of them is power, the second is a control board.
Suppose you need to repair a multicooker Scarlet. With your own hands, you can almost completely disassemble the device and take out the inner part, made in the form of a cylinder. The power board is located near the bottom, and you will find the control board when you take out the cylindrical part of the multicooker.
Take a close look at the chips. It is necessary to look for signs of carbon deposits, violations of the tracks, soldered seams, delamination of the tracks. Capacitors should not be swollen, and resistors should not be blackened.
Board Repair
Do-it-yourself Philips multicooker repair also includes replacing burned parts on circuit boards, if any. They are removed in the same way as on other multicookers.
Damaged parts are soldered and replaced with similar ones, the markings of the parts must match.
If the tracks between the parts of the circuit are damaged, they must be cleaned with a zero emery cloth and tinned again. In some cases, thin wire jumpers can be soldered. After these works, the tracks need to be coated with a layer of varnish. This will protect the board from moisture if it gets inside again.
Where to find and how to replace a thermal fuse
Several thermal fuses are always located in the middle of the multicooker, no matter what company it is.
They are located behind the Cambrians who close the train. In each multicooker, cambrics are located in plain sight. In some models, they can be assembled into a clamp, but more often they are not fixed in any way.
If you are repairing a Philips cooker, you can unscrew the bottom of the appliance yourself and find fuses.
Under the pan is a knot that looks like a massive metal mushroom, backed from below by a spring. If you take apart the slow cooker, then around this mushroom you will find fuses.
Thermal fuses must only be attached with clamps. It’s impossible to solder them for obvious reasons.
How to determine which element is faulty
It's time to test the thermal fuses to find out if any of them need to be changed. It also happens that you need to change all of these elements. You can check the condition of the part with a tester.
Do-it-yourself repair of the Polaris multicooker in this regard is quite simple. After all, thermal fuses do not even have to be removed to carry out a check.
The next sensor is located in the lid, but it is undesirable to open it without confidence that the cause of the breakdown of the multicooker lies precisely there. You can check the sensor by measuring the resistance in its wiring and at the same time raising the temperature of the cover.
If no changes occur during this, it means that the sensor is really out of order and should be replaced. Then it’s already worth untwisting the lid, only you need to do this very carefully so as not to damage anything inside.
The problem is in the power supply
If the device does not show signs of life at all, the indicators do not light up, there is a problem with the power supply.
Remove the bottom cover of the device and measure the output voltage.
With such a breakdown, it is easiest to repair the Vitek multicooker with your own hands. The power supply on it is removed quite easily and choosing the right one for replacement is not difficult.
Top cover latches
DIY repair of a Redmond multicooker is often associated not with a malfunction in the electronics, but with a breakdown of the latch of the appliance lid. She is the weak point of the apparatus of this model. Those who have a unit of this particular company at home in their kitchen can be advised to close the lid with the latch pressed down and release it only after the lid is closed.
If everything has already happened - the part is broken, then there is nothing wrong with that, everything is fixable.
Of course, cooking in a slow cooker with a similar breakdown is much more complicated, so it’s better to repair it right away, especially since every adult can do it.
Warranty repair hardly extends to such breakdowns, and for the money few will undertake to solve a similar problem. You can’t earn much on this, but nobody wants to rack their brains.
How to repair a latch
Service centers with the same problem are often brought to repair the Maxwell multicooker. With their own hands, few dare to fix household appliances, but there is nothing to worry about.
To repair the latch, you need to prepare an epoxy resin, a needle and a screw, the length of which is from 10 to 15 mm.
This part is initially held in the body of the device using two small axes made of plastic. These axes cannot always withstand the pressure exerted on them, sooner or later they break. Debris remains inside the holes in which the axes rotated. The first thing to do is to take them out of there.
On the burner of the gas stove, red-hot the needle, holding it with forceps or pliers.
In this state, it will easily enter the body of the plastic debris. Leave it there for a short time, and when the needle cools down, it can be pulled out together with a fragment of the axis.
In the latch you need to drill a hole with a thin drill. It is necessary to drill where the axes “grew” from before. The diameter of the drill should be less than that of the cooked screw.
When drilling, try not to break the stiffener that is inside the latch. Drill only the outer wall.
Screw the screw into the resulting hole, trying to make it oriented with respect to the latch at an angle of 90 degrees, otherwise it will result in a knocked down axis.
Unscrew the screw, dip it into the epoxy resin and screw it back. Allow the resin to solidify and set the latch in place. The screw will take on the role of a broken axis, and the slow cooker will last a long time.