Door Glass Exploding?

[haxisfan]

Further to my parent's Indesit Washer Dryer's door glass cracking badly I did a little research on the web and I found an article on "whitegoodshelp". I thought it was an old article at first but since I subscribed to it I had many recent updates... so the shattering goes on!

This seems to be a trend for certain manufacturers... but most shocking of all... some Miele's models are involved into this absurd occurrence.

Happy reading

Cya

Washing Machine Door Glass Exploded | Whitegoodshelp

I've been writing about and following cases of exploding door glass in washing machines since 2008. Although it's slowed down now there's been a steady trickle.

www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk

 

[hotpointfan]

Theres a video!

On YouTube of a Hotpoint dryer (2006?) where the door has completely shattered and come off!

I will post the link when I find it!

Jacob

 

[hotpointfan]

Found it!

Picture and link!

 

[aquarius8000]

how the heck did that happen?:O

Heat?

just shows its poor build quality

 

[hotpointfan]

The door!

It was closed and it just smashed! In the comments the owner said it was not hit hard!

BTW - Thanks for all the stuff Chris! I've sent you a letter and some drawings this morning!

Jacob

 

[nrones]

Quite suprising

well, just not to be I'm the defender always, now I am adding Candy/Hoover machine to this list. In particular link you sent, there was one Hoover mentioned, but it was about exploding we already know (nothing new - post is from June 2010), however I am sure I read somewhere about C/H glass going away too (2 or 3 cases).

However it seems Beko and Miele are most common with this fault, Samsung and Whirlpool (whirlpool on the same page I read about Hoover) being mentioned a little less, and there are others mentioned but only up to 3 cases, so we can still call them "accident", until more reports come

Dex

 

[solsburian]

Quite alarming

This is quite unbelievable, especially given the number of Miele machines doing it, I'd expect them to be the last brand on earth to suffer from it.

I wonder if they all source their door glasses from a common supplier?

 

[arbilab]

I can think of no excuse for glass simply shattering even when not under any operational stress. And even non-heat-resistant glass typically won't shatter when heated gradually and uniformly. They must be cutting some MAJOR corners.

More reprehensible is the manufacturers' lackadaisical responses to these incidents. If any of those people's kids were like me, sitting in front of the washer while it ran (exploded), there would be serious injury or death. Are they waiting for a $2M lawsuit to fix this?

Some report the replacement glass looked sturdier than the original. But one had the same thing happen TWICE on the same machine.

Some of these doors have pretty sharp angles. My Frigiwhite does. Sharp angles = structural liability. The original air transport jet, DeHavilland Comet, had a nasty tendency to explode midflight and it was traced to sharp angles--square windows. But engineers are supposed to know these things. By now anyway. Unless these components are coming from China, a country with negative commercial ethics. Remember what they did to dogfood and toothpaste?

 

[dj-gabriele]

Just think that every year in Europe around 13 MILLIONS of washing machines are sold, so even if 1000 machines end up with shattered glass in a year, nobody would care, not even Miele or the most caring high-quality manufacturer!

I think that most of those with the shattered glass problem simply mistreated their machines one way or another like having them not perfectly level, leaning on the door, hitting (accidentally) the glass with rings or other metal jewelry...
This habits might produce micro-lesions where the glass is more stressed and as soon as the machine is started, with vibration, the crack propagates to all the door.

 

[arbilab]

Read the reports again. Many occurred when the machine was not operating. No heat, no vibration, no nothing.

All formed glass contains residual stress. This is known to engineers and it is up to them to provide sufficient headroom in the structure to withstand forming stresses. This is exactly the kind of corner Chinese manufacturers cut. This is a process error, which the designers are not taking into account by trusting their vendors to perform a nominal process. Again, exactly the kind of corner Chinese manufacturers cut if they are not scrupulously supervised.

Trust me. My last 'real' job was failure analysis engineer for Dell, before they threw all that back on their Chinese vendors and their quality went to s**t. I'm typing this on a 13yo Dell. If you buy one today you're lucky if it lasts 13 MONTHS.

 

[grando]

Some Siemens did the same in China

http://bbs.oeeee.com/articles/2009-7/30/6724756_1.html

 

[nrones]

just a little correction to dj-gabriele...

I've just read that last year in europe nearly 20.5 Milion of washing machines were sold, not 13 xD

I know it's unimportant for this theme, but it is an interesting info

Dex

 

[tomturbomatic]

Sometimes there are strains in tempered glass that will cause it to shatter.

 

[arbilab]

Almost every summer here, a few people come out to their parked car that's been sitting in the sun all day, to find their rear glass shattered. So yeah, glass can break under conditions within what would be considered 'normal use'.

Note almost every report included "a loud bang" which means the glass was storing a great deal of stress before it let go. I don't claim to know squat about glassmaking but a little about structural engineering. You have a material with a stress limit. If it is constructed at or close to that limit, it takes only a little added stress (heat, vibration) to push it to destruction. So why are they building that stress into the glass? Because they can make more of them a day by cooling them faster? My first guess.

Above, I did not mean to imply that cutcorner processes take place only in China. We don't know that's where the glass is coming from anyway.

 

[dj-gabriele]

20 millions and a half!? Gosh, way more than what I read in

I second what "Arbilab" said.
I did an exam about failure analysis and some of it was about materials fatigue but still, I think that those numbers are so small that they're not to be considered.

 

[nrones]

20-30 minutes into the cycle!!!

In Haxisfan's link, in one of reviews, it says it exploded between 20 and 30 minutes into the cycle, which, considering "soaking" time could reach max 50 degrees, heated up VERY gradually, so it seems like nothing about heat stress there

 

[arbilab]

We also have to consider the severity of the failure. If 1000 timers, modules, pumps, valves fail out of 20M, you can go "tough luck". But these explosions are such that they are a danger to life and property. In which case, 1000 potentially-fatal events is about 100 times too many for an appliance.

In the worst-case Dako, roughly half the explosions took place when the machine was not in use.

In the majority of reports, the companies were lethargic and defensive in response. That's just wrong, warranty notwithstanding, for a safety issue.

 

[haxisfan]

The Indesit in question was not considered!

Having reported the Indesit washer-dryer developing a problem with the door glass (cracking + little shattering) I'd have expected to see it in the count with all the other manufacturers... they either forgot or considered it as a different sort of incident: after all this happened while the machine was operating rather than in a poltergeist kind of manner!

The Hoover was wrongly taking into consideration cos' its kind of explosion has nothing to do with the door glass but the drum... actually in all those drum-weld failures I've seen in pictures, the glass door has always been intact... sometimes the door has been wide open but without a scratch on the glass!

Still... I'm certainly not justifying in any way any of these occurrences... whether they are related to drums exploding, glass shattering or wiring catching fire... maybe we should all be clever enough to judge what piece of advice to take: should we not leave our appliances running unattended or should we deliberately keep as far as we can from them while they're on?

Haxi ;-)

 

[pierreandreply4]

My advice and thats how i function when i have to leave my home i never have the washer running i do my load of laundry when i return or if i have the washer running i would push in the timer knob and have the clothe soak in the washer(thats in a top load washer) until i return and int he case of a fl i would push the pause button until i return or program the delay wash option for a said amount until i return that would make the washer start only when i return the same go for the dishwasher as well. In other words i will never leave my home when an appliance is running.