Re: Precautionary principle
It's not an Improvised Explosive Device!
Well, It's not improvised...
No spin zone: Samsung recalls 3M EXPLODING washing machines
Samsung says it will recall millions of washing machines that are prone to blowing up. The South Korean electronics giant says that 34 models of top-loading machines are covered by the massive US-wide recall, which was sparked by hundreds of reports of units violently tearing themselves apart mid-cycle. According to the US …
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Friday 4th November 2016 21:53 GMT heyrick
I don't own a Samsung machine, so I don't know how rigid/delicate they are, but isn't it generally a bit precarious to put something bulky (like a duvet, or towels) in a washing machine and then fast spin it? Our ancient Zanussi (so old the super fast spin is a massive 800rpm!) gets scary wobbly on normal spin with towels if they clump together, I'd not want to kick it up to fast spin in case the thing breaks.
Maybe, maybe what these machines need is a cheap little G-force sensor on the processor board. If the readings indicate the machine is thrashing, then just step back the spin speed until it calms down. And if it doesn't, stop the drum and blink some sort of "oh poop" indicator. That would probably add a $ or two to the build cost, and help prevent the sort of rapid unscheduled disassemblies that make clickbait headlines.
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Saturday 5th November 2016 08:52 GMT Triggerfish
Wouldn't recommend a duvet you need one of the big washing machines at a launderette, but a big towel should not be a problem, mine spins at 1100rpm and is fine. Washing trainers is a bit noisy though, might be because it's more of a point weight.
Really it depends on the weight of whats in there, a lot of the modern ones do have some sort of sensor for load weight which should stop it from running if you have to much in the drum..
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Saturday 5th November 2016 09:02 GMT Richard 12
As I understand it, the problem is that the spin-balance/g-sensor subsystem doesn't always work properly and an erroneous reading is not detected.
So the machine thinks everything is fine and keeps spinning until it rapidly dismantles itself, instead of slowing or shutting down the way it is designed to do.
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Friday 4th November 2016 23:55 GMT 404
Looks innocent sitting there....
... my Samsung top loading washer... doesn't look at all like a time bomb waiting in the darkness...
I was relieved not to be destroyed when I checked the model number and found it was indeed the spawn of the Devil's Spinning Washer of Death. It let me live. This Time.
Sent off the recall information for the in-home repair and decal kit. It's a good washer when it's not in an explody mood, sings the Song of It's People, a Happy Washing Time melody when it's done. Bonus.
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Saturday 5th November 2016 12:41 GMT Slx
US Washing Machine Arms Race - Big ≠ Better
Part of the problem with this is that American consumers (and European Consumers to a lesser degree) are demanding bigger and bigger drums in washing machines.
The laws of physics come into play. When you have an object being rotated about an axis at a speed, the g-forces increase massively the further away from the centre it is.
So, as you expand the radius of the drum, you increase the forces at play by a huge amount.
You've also got a lot of machines on sale in the US that are ludicrously oversized as consumers have some notion that they need to be able to wash 400 towels at the same time or ALL their bed linen simultaneously. In reality, they never do and you end up with a few pairs of jeans or a normal sized load being flung around this huge drum which will inevitably have issues with balance.
Where as an older machine (even in the US) would typically have a much tighter packed drum, with smaller diameter which is much easier to balance.
Modern machines rely on sensors and software to ensure they don't go out of balance, and this has allowed cheaper machines to be made with much bigger drums. However, if the sensors and software don't work correctly, the machine will go catastrophically out of balance and fall apart.
Also the build quality of these machines is not always totally comparable. I opened our Miele and it has a smaller drum, surrounded by a heavy stainless steel outer rub, huge cast iron weights and shock absorbers that look like something out of an industrial machine or a car and will take stuff up to 1600 RPM without even noticing.
In the past it was only these kinds of machines that dared to push the speeds up that high.
Nowadays, a lot of the other manufacturers are selling the same kind of high speeds, but with plastic tubs outer, far flimsier suspension systems and much weaker internal drums.
Washing machines are probably one of the only appliances in your home that have to contain serious forces. Other than your car, they are the only device that really does need to be built very well to avoid a catastrophic mess like this.
I think people are going to have to accept that unless you buy a very much more expensive machine like those made by Miele or a semi-commercial machine, you can't really safely do some of these kinds of speeds. Those machines have always been eye waveringly expensive for a good reason.
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Sunday 6th November 2016 00:50 GMT PNGuinn
Re: US Washing Machine Arms Race - Big ≠ Better
It has been shown that the maximum useful spin speed is 1200 rpm. Anything over this is just marketing willy waving.
A 1600 spin speed machine today is probably the base model 1000 or 1200 rpm machine with a couple of bits of chromed plastic trim glued on somewhere, a few semi useless extra "programmes" and several more exciting blinkenlites - in blue, of course.
The bottom line is you're spending 200 to 300 extra squid for it to shake more and fall apart faster.
Many years ago we traded down from an old built-like-a-tank 1100 rpm real hoover to a 1200 rpm Hotpoint. Before doing away with the old machine I got a batch of towels, put 'em on rinse and spin at 1100 rpm a couple of times and weighed the result. Repeated the exercise with the new machine at 1200 rpm. The spun towel weight was identical. Drums not measured but obviously very nearly the same size.
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Sunday 6th November 2016 16:42 GMT Slx
Re: US Washing Machine Arms Race - Big ≠ Better
There is literally only one main-stream company still building them like a tank - Miele.
However, when you look at the cost comparison of a modern machine vs one from the 1980s (most of which were pretty well built), they were simply way more expensive (closer to modern day Miele prices).
That's why a lot of UK and Irish households in the 1970s still had really primitive washing machines in the 1960s-1970s - They were coming in at nearly the price of a small car for an automatic.
If you pick up a washing machine for €299, you can't really expect it to be built out of the same kind of components that its €1299 ancestor was built out of or to be comparable to a modern Miele or comericall-type machines.
What annoys me though is Samsung tend to just whack a fancy display and control panel and a load of polished chrome and bells and whistles onto a pretty cheaply constructed washing machine and sell it for Miele-like prices.
If you're going to spend a grand on a machine, you're better off going for the boring looking German one that's built like a tank than the one that's more or less a Galaxy phone beautifully embedded in a bog standard washing machine.
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Sunday 6th November 2016 02:07 GMT Tim99
I don't buy Samsung
Personal experience has led to me not buying their equipment for a while now. I have had several of their monitors which were excellent; at the time they offered a zero dead pixel guarantee. One of them is 12 years old and still works well.
The rot started to set in when we bought two different Samsung mobile phones (before Android). The first one failed within a year and was replaced by the supplier with a later model which generally ran hot. The second one worked until we got rid of it, but the battery life was short, and the operating system was terrible - Three menu levels down to get the screen to dial in the number of someone who was not in the contacts list.
Four years ago our friends had a new fitted kitchen. They bought a Samsung oven and an induction hob. The oven required 3 visits from an service engineer, but the hob only required one in the first few months after it stopped working completely. After threatening legal action they had both appliances replaced by Samsung. A few weeks later they had an unexpected delivery of a Samsung point-and-shoot digital camera, with a nice letter of apology about the cooker, explaining that the camera was a gift to help compensate them for their inconvenience - The camera stopped working 3 months later.
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Sunday 6th November 2016 13:15 GMT JeffyPoooh
Re: I don't buy Samsung
Tim mentioned "Samsung point-and-shoot digital camera"
I saw a Samsung point-and-shoot digital camera in use once. Each time a picture was taken, the camera was 'Busy...' for about eight or ten seconds.
I couldn't believe it. The processing delay was ridiculous. Far too slow to be explicable as just a slow memory card (they don't make cards that slow).
The owner didn't understand, they assumed such processing delays were normal. I had to show them with my camera. CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK...
Crazy.
At that point, I knew that Samsung was capable of offering obviously-crap products.
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Sunday 6th November 2016 13:02 GMT JeffyPoooh
I wonder how Samsung's new line of Self-Driving Cars is doing?
Not really.
I'm just attempting to implant some small nugget of skeptical common sense into those naive souls that inexplicably believe that Self-Driving Cars are going to herald some new transportation Nirvana in the next few years.
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Tuesday 8th November 2016 15:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: automotive safety standards are a bit more than vague suggestions
"automotive safety standards are a bit more than vague suggestions."
Citation welcome. E.g. do you think former "thought leaders" in Toyota took safety standards seriously before they ended up in court following accusations of bad electronic engineering and software engineering practices leading to "uncommanded acceleration"?
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319903
(25 Oct 2013)
"Could bad code kill a person? It could, and it apparently did.
The Bookout v Toyota Motor Corp. case, which blamed sudden acceleration in a Toyota Camry for a wrongful death, touches the issue directly.
This case -- one of several hundred contending that Toyota's vehicles inadvertently accelerated -- was the first in which a jury heard the plaintiffs' attorneys supporting their argument with extensive testimony from embedded systems experts. That testimony focused on Toyota's electronic throttle control system -- specifically, its source code.
The plaintiffs' attorneys closed their argument by saying that the electronics throttle control system caused the sudden acceleration of a 2005 Camry in a September 2007 accident that killed one woman and seriously injured another on an Oklahoma highway off-ramp. It wasn't loose floor mats, a sticky pedal, or driver error.
An Oklahoma judge announced that a settlement to avoid punitive damages had been reached Thursday evening. This was announced shortly after an Oklahoma County jury found Toyota liable for the crash and awarded $1.5 million of compensation to Jean Bookout, the driver, who was injured in the crash, and $1.5 million to the family of Barbara Schwarz, who died.
During the trial, embedded systems experts who reviewed Toyota's electronic throttle source code testified that they found Toyota's source code defective, and that it contains bugs -- including bugs that can cause unintended acceleration.
[continues]"
Other coverage includes this presentation from Prof David Koopman, expert witness at the trial:
https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_slides.pdf
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
