7 ms·

Companies are buying washing machines to take the chips out and repurpose them

philipswood 5y ago
So ironic. I always keep the idea of getting parts from disassembly as an example of things that you can do at small scale that aren’t viable at larger scale. i.e. as a hobbyist you can’t compete with a large manufacturer w.r.t. large orders that get low per unit costs, but you can repurpose old parts cheaper (for your metric for cost) than they can.
- varispeed 5y ago
  That's what many smaller manufacturers have been doing. Tracking down consumer electronics that contains required chips, desoldering, cleaning and then soldering on their devices. It's a manual work, but can be done quickly depending on a chip. There are some assemblers in China that are doing this too, but pricing is prohibitive for most cases. For instance, a chip that cost $9 before the crisis now costs >$100 + assembly. A toy with the same chip you can get for $5-$15 depending on volume, then it is 10 minute labour to remove the chip, clean it and put it on the target PCB (I do not include the final cleaning time).
  - VLM 5y ago
    If you watch youtube videos about switching power supply teardowns, like "diodegonewild" you'll see that no-name switching power supplies from China generally have fake electrolytic capacitors now a days. If your circuit needs a 400 V 5 uF cap, just desolder and peel off the label on literally "any" capacitor then put a shrink sleeve label saying 400V 5uF and call it good. If it handles 400V that's great for everyone, if it doesn't, then just blame the customer for misuse or make it too hard to return a $2 no-name phone charger. Put a well regarded label on the fake cap, I suspect China ships more caps with ChemiCon labels, than ChemiCon themselves actually manufacture, LOL.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
      I remember making someone on arduino.cc angry because I pointed out that it was very unlikely that Omron actually made the relays on their $6 relay "shield." Or, if they were genuine Omron relays, probably were pulled off other equipment. My first employer (early 90's) would buy large lots of "pulls" for a fraction of the price that Arrow, Future or Digi-Key charged for new components. I'm guessing those sources are still available, just not as widely publicized these days.
      - buescher 5y ago
        Relays drop in price with volume much faster than many other parts. I'd believe it if it were 12v "sugar cube" types, which a quick search tells me it probably wasn't.
pards 5y ago
Is this the first step in getting companies to manage the full lifecycle of their products? I've long believed that companies should be required to take back every product they produce and deal with the waste themselves - they're now motivated to do this, partially at least, due to resource shortages.
- yiyus 5y ago
  That would make life quite difficult for food producers...
  - huffmsa 5y ago
    Soylent green figured it out
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Who else puts shit to use?
- VLM 5y ago
  Who is "the company" in an economic system of infinite middlemen? It would be an interesting way to drive a final stake into the heart of brick and mortar retail; if everything is shipped FROM China for nearly free but shipping TO China costs $25/pound then very rapidly the only way to buy anything will be AliExpress. Remember, "take back" doesn't mean much. Accepts postal delivery? We already have infrastructure for that.
lodovic 5y ago
Title is incorrect, the article merely quotes an ASML executive who claims other industries are doing this instead.
- ulldma 5y ago
  The relevant part being: "But it has become so dire that large industrial companies are buying washing machines in order to rip out the chips and repurpose them, according to ASML CEO Peter Wennink."
- giuliomagnifico 5y ago
  Title edited, thanks!
verve_rat 5y ago
From the article: >Anyone who has tried to buy a car or home appliance lately knows the chip shortage is still pretty bad. Are people building some cheap washing machines without chips in them? That might be harder for cars to get away with, but come on, washing machines?
- CTDOCodebases 5y ago
  Maybe there are people buying them and parting them out.
  - eddyfromtheblok 5y ago
    I talked to a used washing machine purchaser who quoted what my washing machine that was used for 2-3 years would be worth. (spoiler alert: not much at all, you're better off buying used) He told me to check out how unreliable Whirlpool washers are, check it out: https://www.designnews.com/corrosion-outbreak-whirlpool-machines https://www.designnews.com/corrosion-outbreak-whirlpool-mach...
- matthewmacleod 5y ago
  Building "washing machines without chips in them" would be more complex, costly, and time-consuming.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Washing machines without chips existed 60 years ago. Chips are a number of advantages, but mechanical timer washing machines can still be found in operation. (I'm not sure if they are still made, I suspect yes)
    - raxxorraxor 5y ago
      The people that could build mechanical clocks are probably long dead by now, we would need archaeologists to find their fossilized remains. Maybe they left some note somewhere.
raverbashing 5y ago
Companies, but not ASML (I read this as customers of customers of ASML) > that large industrial companies are buying washing machines in order to rip out the chips and repurpose them, according to ASML CEO Peter Wennink.
- dfox 5y ago
  I would not be too surprised if the original source of the (probably partiallly tongue-in-cheek) claim was some supplier of ASML (who obviously at the same time is customer of ASML's customers).
iask 5y ago
If only there is an OpenWashingMachine repo where one can obtain cycle details an what not, perhaps the DIYers can bring these back to life with arduinos and RPis.
- jotm 5y ago
  You can just watch the cycles and write it down, it's boring and rather time consuming. Hoover actually had a model with programmable cycles (you put your custom cycle on Android and upload it via an NFC tag on the washer). What you could set was very limited, but they tried, I guess.
  - a9h74j 5y ago
    Precautionary approach?: make a video now of your favorite washing machine cycle, analyze later.
- buescher 5y ago
  To the extent the DIY "community" has the level of talent that it takes to do a 3/4 HP variable frequency drive, which you'd need for the better washers out there even before you got to cycle management, it's doing things like model airplane autopilots and automobile ECUs, which are a lot more fun.
mynegation 5y ago
Title is misleading, like other mentioned. My first reaction was: “Wow, what an irony, ASML makes the machines that makes the chips”. Second reaction: “No way ASML machines and washing machines could be powered by the same type of chip”. I hope this crisis moves industry just an inch towards better “right to fix”. Engineering decisions that make for the serviceable products will help reusability as well
- mzkply 5y ago
  The OLD machines from ASML (and others) make these chips.
- giuliomagnifico 5y ago
  I edited the title, sorry I thought also ASML was doing it since its CEO is claiming it.
- MisterTea 5y ago
  > Second reaction: “No way ASML machines and washing machines could be powered by the same type of chip”. Why would you think that? There are plenty of little generic microcontrollers kicking around in those machines.
  - raxxorraxor 5y ago
    And these generic $0.05 microcontrollers have enough power for high precision numeric calculations or high speed signal processing. Maybe not for audiovisual data streams, but you would be surprised how fast even these chips have become.
nsb1 5y ago
When your supplier decommits on your order, new order lead times are > 52 weeks and the open market price is 2 orders of magnitude higher than buying new, this starts to make some sense. Either you find a way to make product to sell, or you don't sell any product. It's ugly out there right now.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  I do the occasional hardware design. I just started a new project and I can't find the parts I need new in stock at distributors. However, I have unused stock, still in antistatic packaging with 1990's vintage date codes. Never thought I'd ever use another DIP part again! Customer doesn't care: they just want their boards delivered.
jotm 5y ago
"Anecdote" as in "joke"? Or some guy did it because he could not order the 3 chips he needed for a prototype? They may be buying something but it's not washing machines. There are 1-5 logic chips, 1-3 firmware/storage chips and 5-15 transistors for inverter motors in a washer. That's it.
buescher 5y ago
I have, in a drawer in my office, the motor and an absolutely fascinating motor drive board from an Electrolux washing machine that a colleague brought in. It appears to be a three-phase variable frequency drive (VFD) with an elegant architecture - an optically isolated digital interface to the rest of the controls allows it to use simple shunts for current sensing - and stunning attention to cost, with details like a silver through hole CEM-3 PCB. (note this is no longer cheaper than plated-through FR4). It does have a monster TI DSP on it. It's about 20 years old. Your appliances have been more sophisticated than you think for longer than you think. It is surprising, of course, that someone would rip up a new washing machine for parts, but not shocking. I imagine it would have to be very specifically for low-volume, high margin industrial equipment, which the article hints at but does not make explicit.
- BeefWellington 5y ago
  Indeed, and in some cases the experiences have gotten worse. There's a Youtube channel named Technology Connections and he has several videos on this topic that I recommend. This one about Sunbeam toasters from 50+ years ago is particularly great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLk1cjZ4ll0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLk1cjZ4ll0
  - rootbear 5y ago
    It's a great channel. I was also fascinated by his rice cooker episode. I had no idea they were so clever, combining thermodynamics and the physics of magnetism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSTNhvDGbYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSTNhvDGbYI
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >It's about 20 years old Back when Electrolux was a reputable brand.
- FpUser 5y ago
  LOL. Few years ago I was considering using VFD and motor from a washing machine for one of my commercial projects. Unfortunately the replacement part supplier had very limited stock so I went on to sourcing the motors and implementing controller myself which turned out to be more expensive.
drfuchs 5y ago
I call at least partial BS on this claim. In the US, you can't sell as "new" anything that has even a single "used" part in it. That's to protect consumers from, say, buying an electronic vehicle only to find that the battery only has one year left of expected lifetime. So, the rumor certainly isn't true for any mass consumer products, though perhaps if you're making zillion-dollar specialty equipment where each sale is high-touch, you can have the customer acknowledge in writing that the device is being sold as "used", and perhaps even guarantee a replacement for the used part within some amount of time. Of course, if a company wants to use cannibalized washer parts for some internal purpose, that's just fine.
- varispeed 5y ago
  You are kind of comparing apples to oranges. In most cases a used chip will work just as good as new - and probably be proven more reliable as it has been already tested in a working device. And how do you define "used"? If a module with a chip has been placed in a test harness, is it now used? > and perhaps even guarantee a replacement for the used part within some amount of time. It's called a warranty.
  - drfuchs 5y ago
    The definition of "used" is approximately "delivered to a customer". Doesn't even matter if they returned the box unopened, and got a refund; you still can't sell it as "new". And, no, I'm not speaking of a "warranty." A warranty means "we'll fix it if anything breaks over a certain time period, perhaps with a refurbished part". That's different than "we'll replace this particular part with a new one as soon as we can, even if it's still working, to make sure you get the entire expected MTBF (as that's typically much longer than the overall warranty for the whole device)" It's also wrong to think of used chips being as good as new. Yes, you avoid "infant mortality" (though that seems to be less of an issue than it used to be), but how do you know what environment the washing machine was run in? Thermal and power shocks decrease the lifespan, never mind humidity and static electricity. And even if the environment had been perfect, what about electromigration? That's exactly the reason you can't put used parts into a device sold as new. If you still disagree with this regulation, you're best advised to take it up with the FTC rather than blithely choose to ignore it.
baybal2 5y ago
I sold my surplus STM32 reels at 12x of the original price a year ago.
jacknews 5y ago
I doubt this is true, because modern electronics are so highly integrated that it would be quite difficult to remove the SMD, or possibly BGA CPU/SOC, and particularly in a washing machine it would be encased in silicone or some other waterproofing. I'm not sure why more-modular electronics are not more of a thing. For example, blue-pill STM boards are very cheap, because they are produced in millions. Similarly for many other modules. How is it cheaper to design and produce a relatively limited run of integrated, custom washing machine control electronics, instead of a simple 'baseboard' and a bunch of really-really-mass-produced modules? The later modular design would be a boon for legibility, repairability, re-usability, supply-chain resilience, etc, etc.
- mzkply 5y ago
  or... maybe there's so much volume at the top of washing machines (above the water, where the controls are) that you could place the board there, where chips: - don't need waterproofing - don't need to be tightly integrated - can be fully COTS since the logic is relatively dead simple
  - jacknews 5y ago
    I've had 2 washing machines die in as many years, and the electronics were encased in silicone. Of course, a repair involves replacing the entire proprietary electronics assembly (multiple PCBs, and plastic frame), and is just not economical, so the entire machine, valves, motor, steel drum and cabinet, are written-off because a mosfet failed, or whatever. If the electronics were standardized and modular, even if encased in silicone, there would be an economic case to replace just failed modules.
- VLM 5y ago
  > blue-pill STM boards Those are useless for practical application. 64 KB of flash and 20 KB of RAM on a stereotypical STM32F103 (edited to add weasel words: that's what a blue pill is, correct? I don't actually use them.) Remember these are not PCs where you slap in a bigger SSD or another stick of DRAM. I have a F767 dev board on my desk. Kind of the same family, 'F' series anyway, and it has 2M flash and I believe 768K of SRAM. My latest simple application build (built while posting this) ended up 228744 bytes of flash and 142119 of sram. What kills modern microcontroller storage is every thread has its own fixed size stack so 1K there, 16K there, pretty soon you've got a lot of RAM in use if you go thread-happy, and on the flash side like every civilized embedded device it has MCUboot so 2M sounds like a lot until you partition it into two bootable partitions for OTA upgrades and MCUboot itself takes 64K or 128K or whatever, and there's a big fat (not FAT32 lol) partition for non-volatile config storage. It doesn't matter what RTOS you're using they all seem to be about the same size in the end, FreeRTOS, Mbed, or Zephyr. Another point worth making is peripherals, I'm pretty sure the F103 doesn't even HAVE the capability to connect ethernet whereas I'm doing OTA upgrades using wired ethernet using the F767. Note that for decades now, I guess, its been possible to build a washing machine or a lithography machine as an arduino shield or raspi shield, but nobody does that. The part that would not be a boon would be FCC certification, UL certification, and whatever other safety certifications a product requires. With respect to washing machines as a homeowner I have had to do some repair work on multiple dishwashers and value engineering is the rule, if it corrodes out in five years needing replacement from the point of view of the mfgr that's a "feature" not a bug. So I've never seen a conformally coated washing machine PCB although I'm sure they exist if you don't buy big-box store garbage. Let me remember... Some piece of trash from Sears from 15 years ago used to ship with mosfets having too small of a heatsink and a voltage rating about 5 volts higher than line voltage and an underpowered pump so the user was encouraged to use the water heating mode in operation to keep the water as hot as possible for the anemic pump resulting in the mosfet blowing out every year or so, replaced the PCB under guarantee about three times and tossed that POS. Got a Bosch from horrible depot and that one has a pump that somehow is anemic AND sounds like a screaming jet engine bearing after a year of use, on the third pump now and just ignore the incredible noise. I'm told for eco reasons the new greenwashing dishwashers use 10% less water but don't work at all so you have to run them three times to clean the dishes resulting in 3x the wear and tear (good for mfgrs) and roughly 170% increase in environmental damage over a non-greenwashing dishwasher.
crispyambulance 5y ago
I don't believe it-- at least not the claim that it's actually "washing machines". Has anyone ever looked at washing machine PCB's? They're conformally coated with silicone. The whole control board with "the brains" is dipped into goo to protect it from the harsh, wet environment of a washer. The effect is that it makes component-level repair, let alone part-harvesting, intractable.
- remuskaos 5y ago
  In the past three years I've repaired two washing machines whose main PCBs were not coated (neither were they broken, the washaing machines were defective elsewhere). One was a Beko, so more on the cheap side, and one was some Aldi-branded Italian make I haven't heard of before. I think the name was Whirlpool. It was extremely cheap and the connectors burned after a few years of use, taking the main PCB down with them. But even the replacement part was not coated. I think only the more upscale or expensive ones are coated for longevity.
  - AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
    >Whirlpool Whirlpool is a major US brand of appliances.
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    Whirlpool is not "some Aldi-branded Italian make", it's an extremely common American white goods producer. They used to be well-known for the robustness of their machines.
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      Meh, the Whirlpool of today may be different. Most of these manufacturers ended up in a race to the bottom for making cheap e-waste.
      - frosted-flakes 5y ago
        That's why I said they used to be well-known for it, I don't really know much about them today. But either way, Whirlpool is American, not German-Italian.
Geee 5y ago
I feel that we don't know the full picture of the chip shortage. Is the demand actually up that much, and why? Or is there someone secretly buying a huge number of chips (military, secret crypto mining)?
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  Do note that a lot of the chip shortage is also due to hoarders who scalp them.
FollowingTheDao 5y ago
That'll be good for the environment. =^/
niklasbuschmann 5y ago
Even my local german newspaper decided to publish an article debunking this claim because it keeps popping up again and again.
- buescher 5y ago
  Here is the whole transcript of the ASML earnings call: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4502395-asml-holding-n-v-asml-ceo-peter-wennink-on-q1-2022-results-earnings-call-transcript https://seekingalpha.com/article/4502395-asml-holding-n-v-as... And the whole quote in context: Peter Wennink Well, I'm with the company 23 years, and I've always tried to read the minds of the investors, and I always got it wrong. So don't ask me that question. So, no, it's a place that can only read the minds, not only read the minds, but talk with our customers and see where we are today. And the issue is, and I tried to mention this before is that, the demand that we're currently seeing comes from so many places in the industry. Technology-wise, market-wise, geography-wise, it's so widespread that we have significantly underestimated, let's say, the width of the demand. And I think that I don't think is going to go away. And it just -- it's an anecdote, but I met a very large -- the executive of very large industrial company, a conglomerate, last week. And actually, they told me that they're buying washing machines to rip out the semiconductors to put them in industrial modules. I mean, that's happening these days. Now, you could say, that’s an anecdote. But, to be honest, it happens everywhere. It is -- like I said, it is 15, 20, 25-year old semiconductor technology that is now being used everywhere. It's got -- it's all driven by IoT type applications.
moistly 5y ago
AskHN: Are old-school 1980s/70s discrete and integrated components in demand? I know of a pack-rat with a lot of that-era componentry. Where do people look for sales of private electronics/controllers DIY/learn-it-yourself parts and pieces?
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  I wish!! I have drawers full of that crap.
mrkramer 5y ago
And in the process of doing it they are increasing the prices of the washing machines because customers who need them can not get them.

So ironic. I always keep the idea of getting parts from disassembly as an example of things that you can do at small scale that aren’t viable at larger scale. i.e. as a hobbyist you can’t compete with a large manufacturer w.r.t. large orders that get low per unit costs, but you can repurpose old parts cheaper (for your metric for cost) than they can.

varispeed 5y ago
That's what many smaller manufacturers have been doing. Tracking down consumer electronics that contains required chips, desoldering, cleaning and then soldering on their devices. It's a manual work, but can be done quickly depending on a chip. There are some assemblers in China that are doing this too, but pricing is prohibitive for most cases. For instance, a chip that cost $9 before the crisis now costs >$100 + assembly. A toy with the same chip you can get for $5-$15 depending on volume, then it is 10 minute labour to remove the chip, clean it and put it on the target PCB (I do not include the final cleaning time).
- VLM 5y ago
  If you watch youtube videos about switching power supply teardowns, like "diodegonewild" you'll see that no-name switching power supplies from China generally have fake electrolytic capacitors now a days. If your circuit needs a 400 V 5 uF cap, just desolder and peel off the label on literally "any" capacitor then put a shrink sleeve label saying 400V 5uF and call it good. If it handles 400V that's great for everyone, if it doesn't, then just blame the customer for misuse or make it too hard to return a $2 no-name phone charger. Put a well regarded label on the fake cap, I suspect China ships more caps with ChemiCon labels, than ChemiCon themselves actually manufacture, LOL.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    I remember making someone on arduino.cc angry because I pointed out that it was very unlikely that Omron actually made the relays on their $6 relay "shield." Or, if they were genuine Omron relays, probably were pulled off other equipment. My first employer (early 90's) would buy large lots of "pulls" for a fraction of the price that Arrow, Future or Digi-Key charged for new components. I'm guessing those sources are still available, just not as widely publicized these days.
    - buescher 5y ago
      Relays drop in price with volume much faster than many other parts. I'd believe it if it were 12v "sugar cube" types, which a quick search tells me it probably wasn't.

pards 5y ago

Is this the first step in getting companies to manage the full lifecycle of their products? I've long believed that companies should be required to take back every product they produce and deal with the waste themselves - they're now motivated to do this, partially at least, due to resource shortages.

yiyus 5y ago
That would make life quite difficult for food producers...
- huffmsa 5y ago
  Soylent green figured it out
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Who else puts shit to use?
VLM 5y ago
Who is "the company" in an economic system of infinite middlemen? It would be an interesting way to drive a final stake into the heart of brick and mortar retail; if everything is shipped FROM China for nearly free but shipping TO China costs $25/pound then very rapidly the only way to buy anything will be AliExpress. Remember, "take back" doesn't mean much. Accepts postal delivery? We already have infrastructure for that.

lodovic 5y ago

Title is incorrect, the article merely quotes an ASML executive who claims other industries are doing this instead.

ulldma 5y ago
The relevant part being: "But it has become so dire that large industrial companies are buying washing machines in order to rip out the chips and repurpose them, according to ASML CEO Peter Wennink."
giuliomagnifico 5y ago
Title edited, thanks!

verve_rat 5y ago

From the article: >Anyone who has tried to buy a car or home appliance lately knows the chip shortage is still pretty bad. Are people building some cheap washing machines without chips in them? That might be harder for cars to get away with, but come on, washing machines?

CTDOCodebases 5y ago
Maybe there are people buying them and parting them out.
- eddyfromtheblok 5y ago
  I talked to a used washing machine purchaser who quoted what my washing machine that was used for 2-3 years would be worth. (spoiler alert: not much at all, you're better off buying used) He told me to check out how unreliable Whirlpool washers are, check it out: https://www.designnews.com/corrosion-outbreak-whirlpool-machines https://www.designnews.com/corrosion-outbreak-whirlpool-mach...
matthewmacleod 5y ago
Building "washing machines without chips in them" would be more complex, costly, and time-consuming.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Washing machines without chips existed 60 years ago. Chips are a number of advantages, but mechanical timer washing machines can still be found in operation. (I'm not sure if they are still made, I suspect yes)
  - raxxorraxor 5y ago
    The people that could build mechanical clocks are probably long dead by now, we would need archaeologists to find their fossilized remains. Maybe they left some note somewhere.

raverbashing 5y ago

Companies, but not ASML (I read this as customers of customers of ASML) > that large industrial companies are buying washing machines in order to rip out the chips and repurpose them, according to ASML CEO Peter Wennink.

dfox 5y ago
I would not be too surprised if the original source of the (probably partiallly tongue-in-cheek) claim was some supplier of ASML (who obviously at the same time is customer of ASML's customers).

iask 5y ago

If only there is an OpenWashingMachine repo where one can obtain cycle details an what not, perhaps the DIYers can bring these back to life with arduinos and RPis.

jotm 5y ago
You can just watch the cycles and write it down, it's boring and rather time consuming. Hoover actually had a model with programmable cycles (you put your custom cycle on Android and upload it via an NFC tag on the washer). What you could set was very limited, but they tried, I guess.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  Precautionary approach?: make a video now of your favorite washing machine cycle, analyze later.
buescher 5y ago
To the extent the DIY "community" has the level of talent that it takes to do a 3/4 HP variable frequency drive, which you'd need for the better washers out there even before you got to cycle management, it's doing things like model airplane autopilots and automobile ECUs, which are a lot more fun.

mynegation 5y ago

Title is misleading, like other mentioned. My first reaction was: “Wow, what an irony, ASML makes the machines that makes the chips”. Second reaction: “No way ASML machines and washing machines could be powered by the same type of chip”. I hope this crisis moves industry just an inch towards better “right to fix”. Engineering decisions that make for the serviceable products will help reusability as well

mzkply 5y ago
The OLD machines from ASML (and others) make these chips.
giuliomagnifico 5y ago
I edited the title, sorry I thought also ASML was doing it since its CEO is claiming it.
MisterTea 5y ago
> Second reaction: “No way ASML machines and washing machines could be powered by the same type of chip”. Why would you think that? There are plenty of little generic microcontrollers kicking around in those machines.
- raxxorraxor 5y ago
  And these generic $0.05 microcontrollers have enough power for high precision numeric calculations or high speed signal processing. Maybe not for audiovisual data streams, but you would be surprised how fast even these chips have become.

nsb1 5y ago

When your supplier decommits on your order, new order lead times are > 52 weeks and the open market price is 2 orders of magnitude higher than buying new, this starts to make some sense. Either you find a way to make product to sell, or you don't sell any product. It's ugly out there right now.

HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
I do the occasional hardware design. I just started a new project and I can't find the parts I need new in stock at distributors. However, I have unused stock, still in antistatic packaging with 1990's vintage date codes. Never thought I'd ever use another DIP part again! Customer doesn't care: they just want their boards delivered.

jotm 5y ago

"Anecdote" as in "joke"? Or some guy did it because he could not order the 3 chips he needed for a prototype? They may be buying something but it's not washing machines. There are 1-5 logic chips, 1-3 firmware/storage chips and 5-15 transistors for inverter motors in a washer. That's it.

buescher 5y ago

I have, in a drawer in my office, the motor and an absolutely fascinating motor drive board from an Electrolux washing machine that a colleague brought in. It appears to be a three-phase variable frequency drive (VFD) with an elegant architecture - an optically isolated digital interface to the rest of the controls allows it to use simple shunts for current sensing - and stunning attention to cost, with details like a silver through hole CEM-3 PCB. (note this is no longer cheaper than plated-through FR4). It does have a monster TI DSP on it. It's about 20 years old. Your appliances have been more sophisticated than you think for longer than you think. It is surprising, of course, that someone would rip up a new washing machine for parts, but not shocking. I imagine it would have to be very specifically for low-volume, high margin industrial equipment, which the article hints at but does not make explicit.

BeefWellington 5y ago
Indeed, and in some cases the experiences have gotten worse. There's a Youtube channel named Technology Connections and he has several videos on this topic that I recommend. This one about Sunbeam toasters from 50+ years ago is particularly great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLk1cjZ4ll0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLk1cjZ4ll0
- rootbear 5y ago
  It's a great channel. I was also fascinated by his rice cooker episode. I had no idea they were so clever, combining thermodynamics and the physics of magnetism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSTNhvDGbYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSTNhvDGbYI
ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>It's about 20 years old Back when Electrolux was a reputable brand.
FpUser 5y ago
LOL. Few years ago I was considering using VFD and motor from a washing machine for one of my commercial projects. Unfortunately the replacement part supplier had very limited stock so I went on to sourcing the motors and implementing controller myself which turned out to be more expensive.

drfuchs 5y ago

I call at least partial BS on this claim. In the US, you can't sell as "new" anything that has even a single "used" part in it. That's to protect consumers from, say, buying an electronic vehicle only to find that the battery only has one year left of expected lifetime. So, the rumor certainly isn't true for any mass consumer products, though perhaps if you're making zillion-dollar specialty equipment where each sale is high-touch, you can have the customer acknowledge in writing that the device is being sold as "used", and perhaps even guarantee a replacement for the used part within some amount of time. Of course, if a company wants to use cannibalized washer parts for some internal purpose, that's just fine.

varispeed 5y ago
You are kind of comparing apples to oranges. In most cases a used chip will work just as good as new - and probably be proven more reliable as it has been already tested in a working device. And how do you define "used"? If a module with a chip has been placed in a test harness, is it now used? > and perhaps even guarantee a replacement for the used part within some amount of time. It's called a warranty.
- drfuchs 5y ago
  The definition of "used" is approximately "delivered to a customer". Doesn't even matter if they returned the box unopened, and got a refund; you still can't sell it as "new". And, no, I'm not speaking of a "warranty." A warranty means "we'll fix it if anything breaks over a certain time period, perhaps with a refurbished part". That's different than "we'll replace this particular part with a new one as soon as we can, even if it's still working, to make sure you get the entire expected MTBF (as that's typically much longer than the overall warranty for the whole device)" It's also wrong to think of used chips being as good as new. Yes, you avoid "infant mortality" (though that seems to be less of an issue than it used to be), but how do you know what environment the washing machine was run in? Thermal and power shocks decrease the lifespan, never mind humidity and static electricity. And even if the environment had been perfect, what about electromigration? That's exactly the reason you can't put used parts into a device sold as new. If you still disagree with this regulation, you're best advised to take it up with the FTC rather than blithely choose to ignore it.

baybal2 5y ago

I sold my surplus STM32 reels at 12x of the original price a year ago.

jacknews 5y ago

I doubt this is true, because modern electronics are so highly integrated that it would be quite difficult to remove the SMD, or possibly BGA CPU/SOC, and particularly in a washing machine it would be encased in silicone or some other waterproofing. I'm not sure why more-modular electronics are not more of a thing. For example, blue-pill STM boards are very cheap, because they are produced in millions. Similarly for many other modules. How is it cheaper to design and produce a relatively limited run of integrated, custom washing machine control electronics, instead of a simple 'baseboard' and a bunch of really-really-mass-produced modules? The later modular design would be a boon for legibility, repairability, re-usability, supply-chain resilience, etc, etc.

mzkply 5y ago
or... maybe there's so much volume at the top of washing machines (above the water, where the controls are) that you could place the board there, where chips: - don't need waterproofing - don't need to be tightly integrated - can be fully COTS since the logic is relatively dead simple
- jacknews 5y ago
  I've had 2 washing machines die in as many years, and the electronics were encased in silicone. Of course, a repair involves replacing the entire proprietary electronics assembly (multiple PCBs, and plastic frame), and is just not economical, so the entire machine, valves, motor, steel drum and cabinet, are written-off because a mosfet failed, or whatever. If the electronics were standardized and modular, even if encased in silicone, there would be an economic case to replace just failed modules.
VLM 5y ago
> blue-pill STM boards Those are useless for practical application. 64 KB of flash and 20 KB of RAM on a stereotypical STM32F103 (edited to add weasel words: that's what a blue pill is, correct? I don't actually use them.) Remember these are not PCs where you slap in a bigger SSD or another stick of DRAM. I have a F767 dev board on my desk. Kind of the same family, 'F' series anyway, and it has 2M flash and I believe 768K of SRAM. My latest simple application build (built while posting this) ended up 228744 bytes of flash and 142119 of sram. What kills modern microcontroller storage is every thread has its own fixed size stack so 1K there, 16K there, pretty soon you've got a lot of RAM in use if you go thread-happy, and on the flash side like every civilized embedded device it has MCUboot so 2M sounds like a lot until you partition it into two bootable partitions for OTA upgrades and MCUboot itself takes 64K or 128K or whatever, and there's a big fat (not FAT32 lol) partition for non-volatile config storage. It doesn't matter what RTOS you're using they all seem to be about the same size in the end, FreeRTOS, Mbed, or Zephyr. Another point worth making is peripherals, I'm pretty sure the F103 doesn't even HAVE the capability to connect ethernet whereas I'm doing OTA upgrades using wired ethernet using the F767. Note that for decades now, I guess, its been possible to build a washing machine or a lithography machine as an arduino shield or raspi shield, but nobody does that. The part that would not be a boon would be FCC certification, UL certification, and whatever other safety certifications a product requires. With respect to washing machines as a homeowner I have had to do some repair work on multiple dishwashers and value engineering is the rule, if it corrodes out in five years needing replacement from the point of view of the mfgr that's a "feature" not a bug. So I've never seen a conformally coated washing machine PCB although I'm sure they exist if you don't buy big-box store garbage. Let me remember... Some piece of trash from Sears from 15 years ago used to ship with mosfets having too small of a heatsink and a voltage rating about 5 volts higher than line voltage and an underpowered pump so the user was encouraged to use the water heating mode in operation to keep the water as hot as possible for the anemic pump resulting in the mosfet blowing out every year or so, replaced the PCB under guarantee about three times and tossed that POS. Got a Bosch from horrible depot and that one has a pump that somehow is anemic AND sounds like a screaming jet engine bearing after a year of use, on the third pump now and just ignore the incredible noise. I'm told for eco reasons the new greenwashing dishwashers use 10% less water but don't work at all so you have to run them three times to clean the dishes resulting in 3x the wear and tear (good for mfgrs) and roughly 170% increase in environmental damage over a non-greenwashing dishwasher.

crispyambulance 5y ago

I don't believe it-- at least not the claim that it's actually "washing machines". Has anyone ever looked at washing machine PCB's? They're conformally coated with silicone. The whole control board with "the brains" is dipped into goo to protect it from the harsh, wet environment of a washer. The effect is that it makes component-level repair, let alone part-harvesting, intractable.

remuskaos 5y ago
In the past three years I've repaired two washing machines whose main PCBs were not coated (neither were they broken, the washaing machines were defective elsewhere). One was a Beko, so more on the cheap side, and one was some Aldi-branded Italian make I haven't heard of before. I think the name was Whirlpool. It was extremely cheap and the connectors burned after a few years of use, taking the main PCB down with them. But even the replacement part was not coated. I think only the more upscale or expensive ones are coated for longevity.
- AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
  >Whirlpool Whirlpool is a major US brand of appliances.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  Whirlpool is not "some Aldi-branded Italian make", it's an extremely common American white goods producer. They used to be well-known for the robustness of their machines.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    Meh, the Whirlpool of today may be different. Most of these manufacturers ended up in a race to the bottom for making cheap e-waste.
    - frosted-flakes 5y ago
      That's why I said they used to be well-known for it, I don't really know much about them today. But either way, Whirlpool is American, not German-Italian.

Geee 5y ago

I feel that we don't know the full picture of the chip shortage. Is the demand actually up that much, and why? Or is there someone secretly buying a huge number of chips (military, secret crypto mining)?

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
Do note that a lot of the chip shortage is also due to hoarders who scalp them.

FollowingTheDao 5y ago

That'll be good for the environment. =^/

niklasbuschmann 5y ago

Even my local german newspaper decided to publish an article debunking this claim because it keeps popping up again and again.

buescher 5y ago
Here is the whole transcript of the ASML earnings call: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4502395-asml-holding-n-v-asml-ceo-peter-wennink-on-q1-2022-results-earnings-call-transcript https://seekingalpha.com/article/4502395-asml-holding-n-v-as... And the whole quote in context: Peter Wennink Well, I'm with the company 23 years, and I've always tried to read the minds of the investors, and I always got it wrong. So don't ask me that question. So, no, it's a place that can only read the minds, not only read the minds, but talk with our customers and see where we are today. And the issue is, and I tried to mention this before is that, the demand that we're currently seeing comes from so many places in the industry. Technology-wise, market-wise, geography-wise, it's so widespread that we have significantly underestimated, let's say, the width of the demand. And I think that I don't think is going to go away. And it just -- it's an anecdote, but I met a very large -- the executive of very large industrial company, a conglomerate, last week. And actually, they told me that they're buying washing machines to rip out the semiconductors to put them in industrial modules. I mean, that's happening these days. Now, you could say, that’s an anecdote. But, to be honest, it happens everywhere. It is -- like I said, it is 15, 20, 25-year old semiconductor technology that is now being used everywhere. It's got -- it's all driven by IoT type applications.

moistly 5y ago

AskHN: Are old-school 1980s/70s discrete and integrated components in demand? I know of a pack-rat with a lot of that-era componentry. Where do people look for sales of private electronics/controllers DIY/learn-it-yourself parts and pieces?

HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
I wish!! I have drawers full of that crap.

mrkramer 5y ago

And in the process of doing it they are increasing the prices of the washing machines because customers who need them can not get them.