Surge protector for washing machine: main functions

It’s good that the days of vibrat­ing wash­ing machines are gone, when sev­er­al batch­es of laun­dry had to be washed in one change of water. The cur­rent auto­mat­ic machine is a joy for the host­ess in every respect. Such a faith­ful assis­tant eras­es per­fect­ly, works silent­ly, saves a lot of time. Mod­ern wash­ing is good for every­one thanks to such com­plex house­hold appli­ances, but its dan­ger lies in the form of unex­pect­ed pow­er surges, because it can­not work with­out elec­tric­i­ty. And, it would seem, some small volt­age drop can dis­able the wash­ing machine. And after that, wor­ries begin with repairs, which result in a huge amount.

Surge protector for an automatic machine: what is it and why is it needed

In order not to pay for expen­sive repairs, you can take care of the prop­er pro­tec­tion of the wash­ing machine in advance. A surge pro­tec­tor for a wash­ing machine comes to the res­cue. Net­work fil­ter:

• per­fect­ly smooths out any volt­age drops;
• saves equip­ment from break­down due to pow­er surges and its sharp drop;
• ensures a nor­mal wash­ing process, with­out any inter­fer­ence;
• pro­tects house­hold appli­ances adja­cent to the wash­ing machine from high-fre­quen­cy cur­rents that can enter the mains dur­ing the oper­a­tion of the wash­ing machine.

But you should not mis­take an exten­sion cord that has sev­er­al out­lets for such a pro­tec­tive fil­ter. The exten­sion cord can be used for all house­hold appli­ances in gen­er­al, and the surge pro­tec­tor takes over the pro­tec­tive func­tions of the com­plex sys­tem of the wash­ing machine and oth­er house­hold appli­ances sur­round­ing it.

Surge fil­ters can be built into the machine at the fac­to­ry, or they can be pur­chased sep­a­rate­ly by the con­sumer to con­nect the wash­ing machine through it to the pow­er source. The built-in mains fil­ter is a hous­ing made of impact-resis­tant mate­r­i­al that does not con­duct cur­rent. All parts are pro­tect­ed by a non-con­duc­tive liq­uid poured into the hous­ing.

Mod­ern wash­ing machines are very com­plex sys­tems that require reli­able pro­tec­tion, smooth and sta­ble pow­er sup­ply. If the com­po­nent equip­ment receives high or, con­verse­ly, low puls­es, it burns out and needs to be replaced. This is espe­cial­ly true of machines with touch con­trols, they are very sen­si­tive to even the slight­est volt­age drops. There­fore, net­work fil­ters are installed on such devices by the man­u­fac­tur­er. As a rule, it is locat­ed at the exit point of the elec­tri­cal cord.

The principle of operation of the protective device

There is an opin­ion that it is pos­si­ble to use an auto­mat­ic machine with­out such a pro­tec­tive device. But, this applies only to devices of the old type. Con­nect­ing mod­ern wash­ing machines with­out a built-in or exter­nal pro­tec­tive device does not guar­an­tee that at the next start of the wash­ing cycle, due to the insta­bil­i­ty of the elec­tri­cal net­work, the con­trol pan­el, asyn­chro­nous motor or heat­ing ele­ment will remain intact. Due to dam­age to the touch con­trol, pro­grams may spon­ta­neous­ly change wash­ing modes.

It doesn’t mat­ter what type of surge pro­tec­tor is used, the main thing is the pres­ence and oper­a­tion of capac­i­tors, they affect both the qual­i­ty of the device and the price. The machine already has induc­tors and capac­i­tors installed, but they have such a small capac­i­tance that they can­not with­stand a strong volt­age surge.

The mains fil­ter built into the machine pass­es vibra­tions that have a fre­quen­cy of 50 GHz, oth­ers — larg­er or small­er — are imme­di­ate­ly blocked. This is an impor­tant fac­tor, since if we take into account inter­rup­tions, pow­er surges, then they are dif­fer­ent from a sinu­soid with bursts of ampli­tude, and very sig­nif­i­cant ones that can dis­rupt the sys­tems of an auto­mat­ic machine, even putting them out of action.

It should be borne in mind that the device also has insta­bil­i­ty, and every time the relay is acti­vat­ed and the asyn­chro­nous motor is turned on, peaks are gen­er­at­ed or cur­rents dip, but this process should not enter the net­work, oth­er­wise such insta­bil­i­ty will cause high-fre­quen­cy har­mon­ics, and the mer­it of the net­work fil­ter — to lev­el this process.

So that con­sumers do not neglect the pro­tec­tion of their wash­ing machine, many mod­ern man­u­fac­tured mod­els of auto­mat­ic machines are pro­grammed in such a way that if the built-in surge pro­tec­tor fails, all oper­a­tion of the device is blocked until the pro­tec­tive device is replaced.

Network filters: types and their features

Net­work fil­ters dif­fer in the way they are con­nect­ed to the auto­mat­ic machine. There is an inter­nal fil­ter, and there is an exten­sion fil­ter.

The inter­nal one is already installed dur­ing pro­duc­tion, it needs to be sep­a­rate­ly pur­chased and con­nect­ed. Fail­ure of such a fil­ter will entail its com­plete replace­ment. You will need exact­ly the same part, which is very prob­lem­at­ic: it is usu­al­ly dif­fi­cult to find orig­i­nal spare parts in stores. Lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers of wash­ing machines are con­stant­ly improv­ing the pro­tec­tion of their machines and pro­duce a wide vari­ety of fil­ters, so in cer­tain mod­els they have dif­fer­ences in appear­ance, and most impor­tant­ly, they dif­fer in the lev­el of pro­tec­tion. This means that fil­ters will react dif­fer­ent­ly to:

• rat­ed cur­rent;
• allow­able volt­age thresh­old;
• shut­down time of the machine after a pow­er surge;
• max­i­mum load and max­i­mum cur­rent.

As an addi­tion­al pro­tec­tion, you can use a surge pro­tec­tor-exten­sion. In the event of a short cir­cuit or pow­er surge, the fuse of such a device oper­ates and cuts off the sup­ply of elec­tric cur­rent.

Features of external filters

The exten­sion cord is reli­able and ben­e­fi­cial in that you can choose the one that is most con­ve­nient for use. They are pro­duced with var­i­ous types of pro­tec­tion:

• basic;
• pro­fes­sion­al;
• advanced.

The exten­sion cord can be select­ed with the required num­ber of out­lets, from 3 to 8. Indi­vid­ual mod­els con­tain con­ve­nient devices, which include: but­tons for turn­ing on or off the mains on each out­let, as well as spe­cial pro­tec­tion against small chil­dren.

An exten­sion cord with a large num­ber of out­lets is need­ed for rooms in which sev­er­al elec­tri­cal appli­ances are locat­ed close at once. This is a ver­sa­tile and pow­er­ful device, but the price of such a pro­tec­tive fil­ter will be much high­er.

The exten­sion cord also has dif­fer­ent lengths from 1 to 5 meters. Before going to the store to pur­chase a surge pro­tec­tor, it is rec­om­mend­ed to mea­sure the dis­tance from the out­let to the wash­ing machine and cal­cu­late the required wire length.

Anoth­er impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tic is the max­i­mum load. It indi­cates the range of ener­gy surges absorbed by the fil­ter. If there is pro­fes­sion­al pro­tec­tion, then the fig­ure will be 2500 J, com­pared to the usu­al ones — 960 J. The most expen­sive are those that can with­stand a light­ning strike.

The speed at which the device can fire is also impor­tant. This will deter­mine whether the oper­a­tion of all devices con­nect­ed to it and the lev­el of pro­tec­tion of elec­tri­cal appli­ances will be blocked in time.

There can be sev­er­al fus­es, the main one must be fusible, and the rest: ther­mal and fast.

An exten­sion cord equipped with an LED indi­ca­tor is much more con­ve­nient. After all, with its help you can find out the sta­tus and ser­vice­abil­i­ty of the pro­tec­tive device.

There are cer­tain pro­hi­bi­tions when work­ing with an exter­nal net­work fil­ter:

1. It is for­bid­den to con­nect an exten­sion cord to a 380 V net­work;
2. The sock­et into which the pro­tec­tive device is con­nect­ed must be ground­ed;
3. the pow­er of the device oper­at­ing through an exten­sion cord can­not exceed 3.5 kW;
4. If there are sev­er­al sim­i­lar devices at home, it is not rec­om­mend­ed to include them in each oth­er.

If the filter is out of order

If there is any doubt whether the surge pro­tec­tor is work­ing, it is nec­es­sary to ring the ter­mi­nals — at the input and out­put.

Some­times the input imped­ance can fail, for this you will have to bite the “croc­o­diles” on the plug. If the ter­mi­nals in the line fil­ter area are detach­able, they must be undocked, and only then mea­sured. The result should be 680 ohms.

If the stan­dard check gave nor­mal results, you can check the capac­i­tors. It is required to con­nect them in par­al­lel, and sum up the rat­ings. If you turn on in turn, the rec­i­p­ro­cal val­ues ​​are added. A dis­crep­an­cy with the required indi­ca­tors indi­cates that the con­den­sate has burned out and needs to be replaced.

The issue of pro­tect­ing the wash­ing machine from sud­den volt­age drops is quite seri­ous. Each con­sumer needs to choose and install a surge pro­tec­tor on his wash­ing machine.

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