Microwave plate not spinning

The rotat­ing tray in the microwave ensures even heat­ing and cook­ing. Due to the rota­tion of the microwave, all parts of the dish will be heat­ed equal­ly, this is espe­cial­ly impor­tant, for exam­ple, for uni­form defrost­ing of food. Below we will con­sid­er in detail the rea­sons why the plate does not spin in the microwave and what to do in such cas­es.

Tray installed incorrectly

If the plate stops spin­ning in the microwave, the cause may be that the plate is too large or a piece of food is too large. They can come into con­tact with the side walls or the door of the stove, there­by pre­vent­ing the plat­form from rotat­ing. In some cas­es, due to rota­tion, the food or plate can move diag­o­nal­ly out of the cen­ter, as a result rest­ing against the wall and pre­vent­ing the tray from mov­ing. In this case, it will be enough just to cor­rect the dish being heat­ed, cut a large piece into sev­er­al parts, and replace the large con­tain­er / plate with a small­er one.

Impor­tant:

The instruc­tions for use always indi­cate the max­i­mum weight of the dish that can be reheat­ed. If the allow­able weight is exceed­ed, the microwave oven can func­tion nor­mal­ly, but the engine will oper­ate at max­i­mum pow­er, which leads to its accel­er­at­ed wear and rapid fail­ure.

Anoth­er rea­son why the plate does not rotate is if it is not cor­rect­ly installed on the sleeve. On the reverse side there are pro­tru­sions that fit into the sleeve. If there is no clutch, the engine can spin, but the torque will not be trans­ferred to the plate, and it will remain sta­tion­ary. It will be enough just to move the pal­let a lit­tle in rota­tion or diag­o­nal­ly so that it “sits down” in its place.

To improve rota­tion, a plas­tic roller is installed under the plate, which ensures smooth move­ment. Some­times the rea­son that the plate has stopped rotat­ing is plas­tic wheels. They can get food debris or crumbs that jam the wheels, pre­vent­ing them from spin­ning. Then it will be enough just to wash and clean the roller. Over time, plas­tic wheels wear out, so the roller can be replaced with a new one.

If the cym­bal still does not turn, then there is a prob­lem with the motor or no pow­er.

See also:

Bulb failure

In some mod­els of microwave ovens (pri­mar­i­ly the old mod­el), a burnt out light bulb can cause the tray to stop rotat­ing. It’s all about the design fea­tures, if the light bulb is con­nect­ed in series to a com­mon elec­tri­cal cir­cuit. As a result, its burnout leads to a cir­cuit break, and elec­tric­i­ty stops flow­ing to the engine. The prob­lem is solved by replac­ing the lamp.

In most mod­ern microwave ovens, elec­tric lamps with an E‑14 base are installed, hav­ing a pow­er of 20 watts. Replac­ing them is quite sim­ple, the process itself is described in detail in the instruc­tion man­u­al.

Impor­tant:

All work on replac­ing parts, check­ing the ser­vice­abil­i­ty of inter­nal wiring and the engine must be car­ried out after de-ener­giz­ing the microwave oven!

Nutrition problems

Poor con­tact is one of the most com­mon caus­es of appli­ance fail­ures. After remov­ing the microwave cas­ing, we care­ful­ly exam­ine whether all the wires are con­nect­ed. We pay spe­cial atten­tion to the ter­mi­nals of the elec­tric motor. If they show signs of burn­ing or cor­ro­sion, they must be dis­con­nect­ed, cleaned, recon­nect­ed and pressed well with pli­ers. Pos­si­bly due to poor con­tact, which caused resis­tance to rise, the engine could not run at full pow­er.

If visu­al­ly all the con­tacts are in order, then the pos­si­ble cause of the fail­ure is a mal­func­tion in the con­trol unit. Most often, in this case, some more func­tions may not work, and the oven itself is unsta­ble. The main rea­son for the fail­ure of the con­trol unit is insta­bil­i­ty and volt­age drops, which can be caused by fluc­tu­a­tions and cur­rent surges in the net­work. In addi­tion, some ele­ments may have failed due to water/moisture ingress if the microwave oven has been improp­er­ly ser­viced.

Impor­tant:

If after all the above oper­a­tions the break­down has not been elim­i­nat­ed, the mal­func­tion is most like­ly relat­ed to the oper­a­tion of the engine. If the microwave oven is still under war­ran­ty, then you should not repair it your­self, but should be tak­en to a ser­vice cen­ter. Bro­ken seals will cause fail­ure to repair the prob­lem free of charge, as pro­vid­ed for by the ser­vice guar­an­tee.

Engine problems

A motor fail­ure is the most com­mon rea­son why a plate in a microwave oven stops rotat­ing. In this case, there may be sev­er­al options:

• a gear­box is a set of gears that trans­mit torque from the engine direct­ly to the plate. In old­er mod­els, the gears were made of met­al, so the like­li­hood of them break­ing was min­i­mal. In more mod­ern mod­els, met­al was replaced with plas­tic, so the like­li­hood of gear­box fail­ure has increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly — the teeth (espe­cial­ly under heavy load) wear out and wear out.
• motor shaft — trans­mits the force from the gear­box to the rotat­ing plat­form. Usu­al­ly it is made of plas­tic, if the plate is loaded above the spec­i­fied norm, then it can sim­ply break.
• engine break­downs — most often, they are caused by a short cir­cuit in the motor wind­ing due to the ingress of water or pieces of food. When the wind­ing is closed, the motor starts to heat up very much, one of the main signs of burnt wiring is a sharp char­ac­ter­is­tic smell of burnt wiring. You can accu­rate­ly deter­mine the nature of the mal­func­tion only using an ohm­me­ter. If the val­ue of the mea­sured resis­tance is very large or even goes to “infin­i­ty”, then this is clear­ly due to bro­ken wiring.

Trou­bleshoot­ing asso­ci­at­ed with a gear­box or motor is asso­ci­at­ed with the com­plete replace­ment of these ele­ments. In prin­ci­ple, if you have basic knowl­edge in elec­tron­ics, replac­ing them will not be a prob­lem. New parts can be ordered online or in a store and then, using the tips on the video, you can install it your­self.

Oth­er­wise, it is bet­ter to use the ser­vices of the after-sales ser­vice. At the same time, self-deter­mi­na­tion of the rea­son why the pal­let stopped rotat­ing will help to avoid decep­tion by repair­men. In some ser­vices, they always “deter­mine” the most expen­sive break­down in terms of repair cost, although in real­i­ty the work can cost much less.

See also: