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Increasingly, instead of a stove in the kitchen, a hob and a separate oven are installed. Built-in appliances fit better into the interior, have a more modern look. Today we will talk about how to repair such equipment, namely hobs. They are electric, induction and gas. Each type has its own damage, but there are some common points. We will tell you more about the repair of various types of hob later.
Electric hob repair
In case of any breakdown of the electric and induction hob, the first thing to do is to check whether the power supply is normal. Start with basic things.
- The first step is to check the presence of power in the outlet and the voltage that is supplied. You can do this using a multimeter. Low voltage can cause poor heating of the burners and, in general, incorrect operation of the control.
Repair of the hob can often be done by hand - Next, check the plug, electrical cord for integrity. It is advisable to ring using the same multimeter (for the integrity of the wires, for insulation breakdown to ground). If there is visible damage to the insulation, it is better to replace the wire.
- The next step is to check if the contact on the plate where the cord is attached has not loosened. Remove the protective cover, first inspect visually (the stove is unplugged). If there is no visible damage to the insulation (blackening, melted sheath), you can pull and pull the wires. They shouldn’t move, they shouldn’t pop up. If there is even a slight backlash, tighten the connection). If a wire jumps out of the terminal, it must be redone.
Only after you have checked all these parameters should you move on. Repair of the hob should begin with determining the exact nature of the malfunction. It suggests that it might be the cause.
Dismantling the cooking surface
In order to further repair the hob with your own hands, it must be turned off and dismantled, and then disassembled – remove the front panel. We turn off the power on the shield by turning off the machine and the RCD on this line. If a cord was used when connecting, unplug it from the outlet. After that, we start a sharp object in the gap between the hob and the countertop, raise it.
If you connected the hob directly or through a block, you need to unscrew the wires. To do this, remove (raise or unscrew) the cover that covers the wires. Before you remove them, sketch or better – take a picture of how the wires are connected. This will make it easier to put everything back in place.
After that, the hob is transferred to the table (cover it with a clean cloth so as not to scratch the front panel) and lay it face down.
Next, unscrew the fasteners around the perimeter of the panel. After that, you can remove the ceramic plate.
Problems with burners
If all the burners do not heat up, there may be problems with the power supply, but we would have already identified them. What else can be? Power circuit fuse blown. This happens during power surges. Find where it is installed and inspect or call, replace if necessary. It costs quite a bit, it is easy to replace – pull the old one out of the holders, install a new one.
If problems with heating the burners began immediately after installing the hob, the reason may be that the wire was selected with insufficient cross section. Read this article and choose the correct section, connect a new cable or cord.
If one of the burners does not heat up (or heats up slightly), the following breakdowns may be the causes:
- The heating element is out of order (when measuring resistance, it shows a break). It is treated only by replacement.
- Bad contact in the connection circuit. Again, we visually inspect the wires that go to the broken burner, pull them, tighten / solder if necessary. We take a tester, carefully measure what voltage is applied to a poorly working burner. If it differs from 220 V, we are looking for where the problem is in the power circuit.
- The temperature sensor or relay for turning on the heating element of the burner is out of order. They are usually not repaired, only changed. How to determine that it is faulty? Disassemble it and evaluate the condition of the contacts. It is easy to disassemble – pry off the plastic cover with the tip of a screwdriver, while pressing on the latches.
The temperature sensor can stand next to the burner Inside there is a thermocouple – a pair of contacts that open / close, maintaining the required temperature. They may burn or melt (as in the photo below). You can try to clean them up. For some time, perhaps, performance will be restored, but not for long. Therefore, while it is working, look for the necessary thermal sensors (thermal relays), since replacement will still be needed.
- The situation is similar with the temperature controller (control relay). Inspect it, clean the contacts, measure the readings and compare with the regulator on the adjacent burner. If there are differences, it is better to replace. They are most often located under the control board. They can also be white, gray, but are usually located on the board.
Where to find thermostats on the hob These are also small plastic boxes with contacts inside. They also burn or melt. And they can also be the cause of a non-working state or problems with turning on / off the burner.
Most often, various problems with burners are associated precisely with a malfunction of the temperature sensor or control relay. If one burner does not turn on, after some time it turns off spontaneously, on the contrary, it does not turn off until you turn it off from the network … all this and other similar problems are caused by the incorrect operation of these sensors on a particular burner and you should look first of all there. There is another option – problems with the management (processor). But they will be described further.
Problems with touch panel
Sometimes a malfunction of the hob is caused by incorrect operation of the touch panel. You can understand what’s going on in it by ear. Its correct operation is accompanied by sound signals. If they don’t, then something is wrong. The panel is not responding. This may be due to the fact that the surface and panel are dirty and simply cannot understand that they are being accessed. In this case, it is necessary to wash the panel, wipe it, then try everything again.
Sometimes the control board can “fail”. To fix the problem, we de-energize (turn off the power completely by pulling the plug out of the socket or turning off the machine on the shield). We are waiting for 20-30 minutes, turn it on again. There is a complete reboot, perhaps the problem will be solved.
If all this did not help, it is necessary to disassemble the surface, check the power supply in series, then the existing element base – capacitors, varistors, transformer. If there are no problems here, the repair of the hob is over for you, since the remaining reason is the microprocessor, but testing it is a job for specialists.
Repair of induction panels
The peculiarity of the induction hob is that the heating is turned on only if there is a special cookware on the burner. It stops immediately after the dishes are removed. That is, you can check whether the burner is working only by installing suitable dishes on it. But, in case of any problems, a message about the status of the device and an error code are displayed on the control panel. We look at its decoding in the instructions, so we determine the approximate nature of the damage.
If the surface is not included in the work
If the stove does not work at all, it is worth starting the repair of the induction-type hob, as described above, by checking the power supply, cord, contacts, etc. First you need to exclude the simplest options, and then look for damage further.
If nothing was found during the inspection, and the induction hob still does not work, turn it off, transfer it to the table with a spread cloth, laying it face down, remove the glass-ceramic panel from it (unscrew the fixing bolts). Most of the problems with induction furnaces are related to the power block and the breakdown of the elements. This is due to power surges and to prevent such problems, it is better to install a stabilizer.
We begin the test with the continuity of the power unit. These are diode bridges, transistors and a fuse. There is only one fuse – it is easy to find and check it.
Diode bridges and transistors are located next to the radiator and burner control keys. We turn on the multimeter in the continuity mode and check the diode bridges and transistors.
If there is a breakdown, we will hear how the device squeaks – this element is faulty and must be replaced. Solder the old one, install the new one. If it is impossible to find a spare part of the same company, select with similar characteristics. But there may be problems when soldering, as they can have different dimensions. This is not so important, performance is important.
After replacement, we check all power circuits for the absence of breakdown and short circuit. We especially carefully check the part that is associated with broken elements – there may still be failed elements. If there are no other damages, we assemble the panel, connect it, and test it.
For a detailed process of repairing an AEG (Elektrolux) induction hob, see the following video.
Other problems
The device of this technique is more complex and there are many possible malfunctions, as well as reasons. Here are the most common problems and how to fix them.
- There is no communication with the control panel. Most likely the problem is in the power supply or in poor contact. It is necessary to carefully examine the right or left side, depending on which of them does not work. Then check the presence of power on the control board and all the wires that lead to it.
- One of the burners “does not see” the dishes. It is necessary to check the sensor responsible for this burner.
Most of the problems with the induction cooker are due to the wrong choice of cookware. - The burner turns on by itself. Remove the metal object from the stove or clean the surface. This false positive may be caused by salt residue. Wash everything well and wipe dry.
- The water in the pot doesn’t heat up well. Most likely, the problem is in the pan. It does not conduct heat well.
- The hotplate overheats and switches off. In most cases, the problem is also in the dishes. If others react normally to the same cookware, check the sensor for the “defective” burner.
You can avoid most problems by carefully studying the instruction manual and powering the equipment through a stabilizer. Then repair of the induction type hob may not be needed at all.
Gas hob repair
In a gas hob, you can only repair the electric ignition and the gas control system on your own. With them, in principle, the main problems arise. Since the gas hob with electric ignition is also connected to electricity, in case of general problems with the electrical part (piezo ignition does not work at all), first check the power supply at the outlet, inspect the integrity of the wire. If everything is fine here, you can go deeper.
Electric ignition is a convenient thing, but from time to time the spark stops “jumping” and the fire on some burner does not light up. You can light it by pressing the button of another burner. They are connected in parallel and when you press one, there is a spark on all burners. But this situation is abnormal and the spark must be restored. Repair of the hob in this case is not very difficult. There are several reasons:
- The candle is clogged with grease, dirt, detergent residues. It must be thoroughly cleaned and dried.
- Check the power wires that go to this candle. To do this, remove the burners, the top panel. If it is glass-ceramic, it can be planted on a sealant, we cut it and remove the front panel. If it is metal, unscrew the fixing bolts. Under the front panel, we are interested in power wires. It is necessary to check for insulation breakdown to ground (ground). To do this, you can press the ignition button several times, if there is a breakdown, a spark will jump in that place. If there is no visible damage, we call the wires with a multimeter for integrity and for a breakdown with the ground. We replace the found faulty conductors with similar cross-sections.
It is necessary to check the integrity of the wires and their insulation - If the conductors are intact, the contacts are normal everywhere, the problem may be in the button. We disassemble it, clean it, put everything in its place.
- Another reason is problems with the ignition transformer. O has two windings, each of which feeds two burners. If you measure the resistance between two opposite burners, it should be about 600 ohms – this is the resistance of the transformer windings. If it is lower, most likely the reason is a stuck (dirty) button. We take them apart, clean them, put them in place.
What else can be done is to check the contacts and soldering. Contacts, if necessary, tighten or clean from dirt, soldering, if cold is found, resolder. How can you tell if a solder is cold? If you pry the tin with something hard (the end of a multimeter probe, for example), it moves or flies off, there may be cracks in it. In this case, warm up the soldering iron, re-melt the solder.
After ignition, the flame goes out on the burner
Many modern gas stoves or hobs have a gas control function. Near each burner there is a sensor that monitors the presence of a flame. If there is no flame, the gas supply stops. The function is useful, but sometimes problems begin – after ignition, when you release the on/off knob, the flame goes out. The fact is that the sensor – a thermocouple – is dirty or out of order and “does not see” the flame.
First you need to try to clean all the sensors. They quickly become overgrown with grease during operation, so they require periodic cleaning. First, turn off the power, remove the burners, remove the handles, unscrew the front panel. We find a thermocouple on a non-working burner. This is a small metal pin located close to the gas burner. In some models of gas hobs, it can simply be inserted, in others there is a latch. It is necessary to get the sensor out of the socket and clean it from contamination. Use regular kitchen dishwashing chemicals or something stronger. It’s important to get results. We wash the sensors, dry them, put them in place. You can check your work.
Sometimes it happens that even after cleaning, some burners do not work. This means that the thermocouple has failed. In this case, the repair of the gas-powered hob is the replacement of the thermocouple. You already know how to get to it, but it turns off simply: you need to remove the corresponding wires from the block. Take out the old sensor and put in the new one. We put the cover back in place, check the work. That, in fact, is all.
One important point: if your equipment is under warranty, you should not repair it yourself, otherwise you will be denied warranty repairs.