Kenstar Washing Machine .

It has been a long long time since I wrote in my blog . It is not because of for any dearth of material, but because I have been thinking furiously for the last so many days the sequence and the manner in which to put it . From the tips given by Anuj and Jayati , to write about what concerns me most , I have put aside all that material and to write about some thing which happened two days back and concerns me the most for the time being .

We got ourselves the " very first top loading tumble top washing machine , model LF 2008 E ,to be introduced in India " by Kestar . I thought now Priti can just load up the machine switch on and forget about it . After an hour and half or so remove fully washed and centrifuged dried cloths and that was that . She can thus enjoy the freedom from the drudgery of washing cloths in our semi automatic machine , where she had to do water filling and transferring the cloths from washer to drier etc etc before the cloths were centrifuged dried !!! It worked fine for couple of times . Priti was happy and because she was happy I was doubly happy !! Then one day Priti had loaded the machine , started the washing cycles and we were having our breakfast . Suddenly we heard tremendous racket and loud knocking noises coming from the direction of the bathroom where the washing machine was running . We saw the machine was in "spin" mode , vibrating like mad and creating the noise we had heard . I immediately hit the power button to turn the power "off" , to my horror nothing happened and it appeared that the machine had gone in "self destruct mode" . It stopped only when I pulled out power plug from the mains supply !
We took out semi wet cloths , manually wrung them and hung them to dry . I had a look at the machine , it appeared OK . Priti and I heaved a sigh of relief as we had spent major portion from our pension savings for the machine .
After that it worked normally for couple of times , then the malfunction/snag was repeated . This misadventure was repeated FEW times !!! After few more cases , I discovered that even though hitting the power button does not stop the machine instantaneously , pressing START/PAUSE button stops/pauses it immediately . Then once , we were late reaching the machine , this time vibrations and self destruct mode was so severe that a corner of the plastic outer drum was broken . I called the Kenstar Service centre . they sent a service engineer I explained every thing to him and emphasised that a "fully automatic machine " was not expected to go in self destruct mode like this as it can cause a major accident if in operation when there was no one around to switch it off , a very likely scenario , with working couples using this machine where both were working and likely to be away from the house .
The service engineer found that there was nothing seriously wrong , how ever he had no satisfactory explanation for or solution to prevent such vibrations in the future . Charged me a hefty amount for the visit and went away .
There after , I always stand guard next to the machine as soon as spinning occurs any time between the cycles with finger on the pause button just in case the vibrations are likely to run away !!

As I had mentioned , Anuj is home . Every time we use the machine and he sees me standing guard he has been making fun saying things like if you had to stand by the machine all the time why did you spend so much in buying a "fully autometic " machine etc" .
So three days back just to make him happy I operated the machine the way a fully autometic machine is supposed to be operated . ie , put dirty clothes inside , put detergent , connect the water and switched it on and left it unattended !!!! It was like tempting fate and before we could reach it , This time the whole thing really did self distruct !!!! The machine had come to a grinding halt . I asked Anuj to take some photos with his digital camera , here they are :

It was back to the service centrer and the service engineer . It was found that , the plastic drum had broken off from the spring moorings !!!! Now it has to be replaced , a costly affair !!! I discussed this machine with the service engineer .The machine has some good design features like wash , rinse and spin with repeated water changes between each cycle . Different cycles for different fabrics etc . Since the first time this had happened I have been thinking as to why the designers have not been able to foresee this type of thing happening . Also by now they must have received feed back of this type of undesirable charectership of the machine and no corrective action seems to have been taken . I think there is a very simple solution to this , it may not stop excessive vibrations as I have not been able to identify the reason for them , it will surely will stop the machine before it self destructs !!! As the drum is mounted on two springs at the back and a shocker on the front , vibration amplitudes will increase and run away only in fore and aft axis and not in lateral axis . So All they have to do is install a limit switch / micro switch at the back of the drum . This will ensure that whenever the vibration amplitude increase to certain limit , this limit switch is operated by the rear wall/ casing and switches off the machine before further damage is caused . The service engineer had no sat solution for its installation .

I checked for web page /e mail address of Kenstar on the instruction guide . Extremely surprised to see it was not given any where . I googled Kenstar and came up with the web pages . Tried to contact them here , and here . The server seems to be having trouble , as till date , I have not been able to get in touch with them on the internet !!!! SURPRISING !!!! A modern company having such poor web page / web site .

Machine is still not repaired . Will keep you posted .