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George Herold George Herold is offline
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Default GE rant, and oven controll board problem

On Oct 20, 6:09*pm, (Dave Platt) wrote:
In article ,
John Robertson wrote:





We have a GE profile electric oven (made in 1993). * The oven stopped
working. *When you pushed the button to turn the oven on the display
just blinked. *A call to the local repair guy, “We don’t service GE
stuff, sorry”. *I wondered why at the time. *So my wife called a GE
repairman and scheduled a visit. * The day before the visit he called
to get the problem details. *“Oh”, he says, “You need a new oven
control board and GE no longer makes it.”


So GE’s idea is that I buy a new oven. *I think I might rather have
hot pokers in my eye’s than buy a GE product!


Anyway I’m sending my board off to Fixyourboard.com tomorrow, ($160
and a two year guarantee). * Now I’ve got the board sitting in front
of me, if anyone here some idea of what to try I could save the money
and time. *There are no obvious blown bits on the board, and I removed
and reinstalled *the one connector cable.


Not uncommon an experience, as I understand it. *Finding a
manufacturer which makes parts available for more than a few years
(i.e. for much longer than the law says that they absolutely have to)
is increasingly uncommon. *Sears was traditionally pretty good about
this, for their own products, but I don't know how they are at
supplying parts for the other-label products they've been selling in
recent years.

I can appreciate the manufacturers' problem, to an extent... there are
so many models, and the competitive pressure between manufacturers is
so high, that it's hard to manage to stock the unique parts for so
many models for a long time without the overhead cost becoming quite
prohibitive.

My guess is that when a manufacturer arranges to build a new model of
$WHATEVER, they take a good guess at the number of replacement modules
or parts of each type that they're likely to require during the "parts
must be available" period, and bump up their ordering by that much and
no more. *Hence, most of the replacement control boards available for
a given model are probably built at the same time as the completed
ovens of that model, and simply stuck into storage (with the
manufacturer having to front the cost for building and storing them).

When they run out, it's probably prohibitively expensive for them to
fire up a whole new production line to build a few dozen or a few
hundred more... and a lot of the original parts they used may no
longer be available, so they'd have to redesign the control board
in order to be able to build it!


I've never bought an oven, they've all come with the house. But I
like a simple appliance that I can repair or have repaired. My granma
had this blender with just one speed. I think it was retired by my
brother long after her death only because the top to the glass
container 'decayed', some sort of plastic. I don't see the need for a
new product every year.

I had an experience much like your own last year, with an oven of a
similar age (non-G.E.). *It started beeping and flashing a fault code
when it wasn't in use. *By googling around a bit I learned that this
is a non-uncommon fault in that model/series, and that the original
board would be extremely expensive to buy if it was even available.

I did the same thing you've decided to do - ship it off to
fixyourboard.com - and they were as good as their name. *I got it back
within a week, reinstalled it, and it has worked fine ever since.


That's very comforting to hear, I was on this other repair website and
that was the reccomendation.


If I recall properly, the common sorts of failures on these boards
include:

- *Electrolytic capacitors drying out, and either losing capacity or
* *developing a high series resistance. *A capacitor ESR meter could
* *perhaps identify these.

- *Cracked solder joints, due to repeated heating/cooling cycles
* *putting stress on the joints. *Inspection of the board might locate
* *some of these; *wicking the old solder off of suspect joints,
* *re-fluxing with RMA, and resoldering could fix 'em.


I l

- *Some semiconductors in some designs are prone to fail.

If I recall correctly, the fixyourboard service for my model included
replacement of some of the "prone to fail" parts even if they had not
yet failed.

--
Dave Platt * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: *http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
* I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
* * *boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


Yeah I think the best bet is not to screw with it...Send it away to
someone who knows the problems. I've got plenty of other stuff to
do.

Thanks for the nice reply,
George H.