Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

[Log_on_Bob]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

OK, here is the link to the outfit that used some LED found at Home Depot for all three lights and though I have not looked at the other two lights there appears the other two have their own circuit boards. They are a business and most likely why exact part used is not mentioned, I get it.
https://sunnyappliancerepair.com/ref...n-jose-ca.html

I would say by looking at it, it was taken out of something based only on the shape is rather strange. One can see how the wiring was done at least on the top light. Note the Red connector gets crossed over with the White/Yellow

Next issue, Voltage to the Top Board. I thought I figured out the Wide connector, White/Yellow supplies the 115v. My meter across White/Yellow says zero door switch closed and 118v open. The Red/red yellow smaller connector shows about 1.5v closed and 3v open. So, I assumed the smaller connector was just going down stream to the other two lights and supplying 3v as many LEDs are around 3v.

I have not tried all combo's , I think I was on Red to the White , switch open and saw 45v's. I quit at that point as I was trying not to get shocked. :-)

Well, I tried to bench test the the top circuit board, I applied 115v to the Wide connector and nothing. I took it back the fridge and found out both connectors need to be connected or nothing. So I don't know how the Red/Red-Yellow is being powered to 3v when not connected to the top board. I then assume the LED of all three lights might be in series as the top one will not light without both connectors.

[bluto]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

I was thinking about something along those lines. I think I would de-solder the 2 connectors from the LED board. Then I could solder a pigtail going to a light socket, LED strip, etc. to that connector and would be able to plug into the fridge's 120v connector. Then I might also do the same thing with the lower fridge light and the freezer light. The output connector on the upper light would also be fed with 120v in order to feed these other two lights. The only trouble would be if the LED strip can't handle the cold of the fridge/freezer.

The good part of this is that without modifying the fridges wiring, all of this would be easily reversible if the manufacturer ever gets their stuff together and fixes the design of the replacement parts.

[Dave125]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

Would it work to remove the light, cut the end of the power wire connection and wire it to a $8 LED light? I hope it would still turn off and on with the door switch. I would lose the freezer light but I have nothing now, plus you use the fridge more than the freezer

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Westek-C...W-N1/305104482

[Log_on_Bob]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

Hey Bluto... similar results here, manually working the switch and they might come or not. Searching, I didn't check Digi but Mouser shows many. I came up with 5630 by measuring then I re-read redwires early post,,:-( so yeah it appears to be 5630 but...

Which one, I get the 4 mounting points but then there are either ...

1. Standard or High Power
2. color,, I think somewhere around 4K would be fine for me.
3. would be, do they all have the Heat Sink built in, no mention that I see.

Once I have a suggestion or two, I will give it a go for fun. There is a article where a repair guy removed all three lights and replaced them with ones claimed to be at Home Depot. No details as to what was used, picture looks like he tore the unit out of something.

Link to Mouser: Still many to choose from.
https://www.mouser.com/Search/Refine...d=5630+SMD+LED

Digikey:
https://www.digikey.com/catalog/en/p...ower-led/83412

[bluto]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

I think you are on to the cause with the bad LEDs leading to burning out the resistors. My fridge light is just about dead now. I think replacing the caps extended its life just at a little. Now the flickering is back. If I cycle the door switch a few times, it will come on. And then if the door is opened again a short time later it will also come on. But if the light has been off for a while (and thus sitting in the cold), the flicker comes back. This also supports the notion that heating up the board will help temporarily. Perhaps the LEDs were not rated for low temperature usage? I suppose I should pull out the secondary modules (lower fridge and freezer) and check those for black dots also.

So I am not sure what else can be done to fix this except for replacing it every ~2.5 years. I guess one could try replacing the SMD LEDs, but my Digikey search skills are lacking in the surface mount LED department.

It is such a joke that crap like this that is supposed to be more efficient and long lasting ends up being just the opposite. How efficient is it to spend $$$ to replace the LED lighting modules several times over the 10+ year life of the appliance. I might just try to figure out how to put a 40 watt light bulb in there.

[redwire]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

Flickering and cutting in and out like people describe is what LED's do that are failing.
The LED dies are basically glued down inside and heating things can temporarily restore a bad-bonding wire connection or cracked die. But it doesn't last as a fix. There should be no black dots visible in the LED's.

I think Whirlpool cheaped out on the LEDs as there are pcb footprints to take higher power SMD5050 w/thermal pad LED's U3-U6. In other words, there are high power and low power LED versions of this board. Companies push a low cost, low power version hard to make up for it.

The question is who failed first, the power supply or the LED string? I would guess the LED's fail and then the power supply resistor cooks?

The semiconductor numbers can be read under a microscope and very bright light, at a sharp angle. Conformal coating makes it difficult. I use sharp needle probes to poke through the coating to test parts.
We really need a schematic drawn up to figure out what is failing in these boards.

They are $50 each and Sears offers a 16-pack of WPW10515058 for $3,000. ??!?

[Log_on_Bob]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

RJ - agreed, heating the entire board would not pin point the issue, I was just following the YouTube vid. So, to narrow things down, I first made sure it was at failure , flickering lights , wrapped the half with the most components with a rag and heat gunned the other side the one Cap side and only applied heat on the Cap side , call it Top. Installed but not in the case and it worked again. Left it out of the case and manually closed the door switch 8 or 9 times and it worked just fine. Closed the door and checked every few minutes, Failed around 10 mins., but it came back on it's own for a few more mins while I opened and closed the door switch.

After heating, the heated side was unconfortable hot to touch and the covered side was cool but not cold and damp.

So Failed, pulled a did the same to the other side heating all the bulk component side with just about the same results. No clue now...

Next is was just sitting on my desk for maybe 30 mins, no heat applied and I got the same results again.

Then I was wondering about supplied power. J1 pin the yellow wires, wider connector, switch open is 118 V A/c, but closed is still 24v A/c that I don't understand.


Testing various components with my new Mega328 has raised more questions than answers so far. , I will post what I have found tomorrow...

[R_J]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

The transistors could be 2SC3138-O, KRC113S or KRC413, What part are you heating with the heat gun? A heat gun would heat a large area, the whole board, so it could be anything that is bad, you would need to only heat a couple parts at a time. It could be a bad feedthrough that is causing the flickering.

[Log_on_Bob]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

The circuit does'nt look that complicated, what are the markings on Q2 & Q3? You have the board so draw out the schematic and post it if you can. I don't think you will find a schematic anywhere.

I have the same board and the same flickering lights. With my best magnifying glass I can't make out anything on Q3, Q3 has a faint circle with either "ON" or "NO" depending which way you hold it. Not much help.

My R15 got hot enough to burn a small hole on top and lost it's markings but it still showed as 179 ohms with a meter. I went to my local spot to get a 137 ohm resistor and somehow came home with a 330, my fault. Store closed and I did have a 100 and a 180 in stock so I soldered on a 180 1/4 watt. Brightness seemed about the same. Flickering returned within the first hour.

My R17 910 shows as 90.5 ohms and seems to be fine and the 910 marking is like new . I don't see anything else, no black marks anywhere.

Now, Googling around there is a Youtube vid to use a heat gun or hair dryer on it,, Right I thought but I tried it anyway. The first time much to my surprise lasted 3 days and I had zero hope for it. Second time about 3 hours and the last time maybe an hour.

So my current theory that If it were not in a refrigerator it could be a bad solder joint getting hot, or a crack that is expanding and then fail over and over, cool down it works until it gets hot again. But I think it is moisture issue. I did recoat mine but with clear Gel nail polish, didn't help.

I know enough to be dangerous, so no solution here. One comment was a bad LED. All four of mine have a tiny grey dot and I have no clue if that is Black Death dot or not. Thing is, they will light up just fine after the Heat Gun trick. oh,, I also left it out the sun all day, 90F most of the day and no love there either. I am assuming if they light at all they are not the problem, or????

Will advise if I find anything out. I just bought a Mega328 tester,,, :-)

[R_J]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

The circuit does'nt look that complicated, what are the markings on Q2 & Q3? You have the board so draw out the schematic and post it if you can. I don't think you will find a schematic anywhere.

[fanplant]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

Hi,
I'm repairing one of these boards for a friend. My R17 is completely burnt and R15 is illegible. I'm going to search what I have laying around and scratch off some off the conformal coating and solder on new resistors but before I do I'd like to get the values correct. From what I know the markings of SMD vary so this is what I know:

R17 has a 3 digit code of 910 that equals 91ohms
http://kiloohm.info/smd3-resistor/910

R15 has a 4 digit code of 1370 that equals 137ohms
http://kiloohm.info/smd4-resistor/1370

Now I would love to know the purpose of these so I could maybe change the values to provide less light for the advantage of the LED and driver circuit lasting longer. By the way does anyone know what kind of driver this is? Constant current or constant voltage? There are cheap aftermarket drivers out there.

[bluto]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

I'm still following this thread.. I still get the intermittent flicker occasionally when opening the fridge. Cycling the door light switch plunger will quickly clear the problem. I have left the light cover off so the light is hanging by the wires. Once when it flickered I tried unplugging the output side connector and all the lights went out. So that pretty much confirms that the LEDs are in series.

Other than that, the problem is not bothering me enough to do anything else about it right now.

[R_J]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

unfortunately when I tested the light in the fridge it flickers off and on, so I have a strobe light now. I may go with a homemade LED light strip

Try replacing the resistor R15 with the correct value of 137Ω. You can't use a 1.8k which is 10x what it should be and expect it to work.

[Dave125]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

unfortunately when I tested the light in the fridge it flickers off and on, so I have a strobe light now. I may go with a homemade LED light strip

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

My R15 reads just under 138 ohms. It looks like the number is starting to blacken, I think the code number is 1370 which would be 137 ohm +/-1%

I am confused about this if the resistor has a marking that say 1370
and you get 137 ohms how do come up with 1.8k ohm that makes the LEDs start working again

[hoonigan_elec_engineer_04]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

Try replacing R15 with a 1/4 Watt 1.8k ohm resistor and touch up some solder connections that look a little suspect for a cold solder joint. See my recent post with pics.

I have a Whirlpool side by side fridge that is not even 2.5 years old. Recently the LED lights inside the fridge and freezer started acting up. Instead of fading on when the door was opened, the lights would just flicker slightly. Closing the door and re-opening would seemingly fix the problem. The problem was intermittent, but I figured it was only going to get worse so I decided to do something about it.

After some Internet searches, I determined that I was not the only with with this problem. There were dozens of reports of the problems with the same light module as what is in my fridge (W10515058). There were people that said they light failed when the fridge was just 19 months old. Some folks said they replaced the flickering module (spending between $75-$150) and it failed again in a year or two. There were some helpful videos on removing the module that also had some dubious fix suggestions.

To start with, I removed the module following the instructions in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCY2iaOFgN8

The module has two connectors. The first provides 120v to the board to power the lights when either the fridge or freezer door is opened. The second connector provides DC power to the other lights in the bottom of the fridge and freezer. Once this module is removed, all lights in the fridge will not function.



Upon examining the module, the first thing that strikes me is how well it is made. It is a multi layer board with mainly SMD components. It also has a conformal coating over the board and all components. There is no fancy control logic chip, so I would surmise that the the fade-in effect is orchestrated by a simple resistor-capacitor timing circuit. And this board operates in a nice, constantly chilly environment for 15 to 20 seconds at a time... So what excuse does it have for not lasting 10+ years?



I am going to take a stab at this and say that the problem is with one of the electrolytic capacitors on the board. There are a total of three of these capacitors present, a 3.3uf 400v (C6) and 2x 100uf 50v (C7 + C8). The first one appears to be the primary side filtering capacitor as it is near the 120v connector and in between the 4 diodes that seem to be the rectifier. The issue that I see is that the brand of this capacitor is 'Lelon' which happens to be on our bad capacitor list here. The other two caps are 'Nichicon' which are on our good list.

EDIT: Replacing C6 did not solve the problem! I am still working to find a permanent fix and will update the thread when a solution is found.

[hoonigan_elec_engineer_04]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

R15 is a 1.9k ohm resistor. I replaced it with a 1/4W 1.8k ohm resistor in its place and lights are working. See my recent post with pictures. I also touched up some possible cold solder connections too.

My R15 reads just under 138 ohms. It looks like the number is starting to blacken, I think the code number is 1370 which would be 137 ohm +/-1%

[hoonigan_elec_engineer_04]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

I replaced the R15 resistor with a 1.8k ohm resistor 1/4 watt. I was able to put resistor in its place without interfering with putting the lens cover back on. I touched up some suspect solder connections that may be cold solder joints hence the burnt marks on PCB board. I had to melt off the rubber coating until I could get some solder to roll on the connections.

Bluto -

I'm facing the exact same problem on a Kenmore fridge; apparently many domestic fridges used the same set of three Whirlpool LED PCBAs.

However, on my control board, R15 (LED side of the board) is obviously toasted. Since your R15 appears to re unaffected, could you tell me the value marked on your R15?

The adjacent R17 is unaffected, and is marked 910 ohms. I've done a lot of research on this problem, and others have reported both R15 and R17 as having been grossly overheated, enough to obliterate the markings. I have not been able to locate a schematic.

I'll take some photomicrographs of the toasted R15 on Monday, and post them here.

[hoonigan_elec_engineer_04]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

I replaced the R15 resistor with a 1.8k ohm resistor 1/4 watt. I was able to put resistor in its place without interfering with putting the lens cover back on. I touched up some suspect solder connections that may be cold solder joints hence the burnt marks on PCB board. I had to melt off the rubber coating until I could get some solder to roll on the connections.

Bluto -

I'm facing the exact same problem on a Kenmore fridge; apparently many domestic fridges used the same set of three Whirlpool LED PCBAs.

However, on my control board, R15 (LED side of the board) is obviously toasted. Since your R15 appears to re unaffected, could you tell me the value marked on your R15?

The adjacent R17 is unaffected, and is marked 910 ohms. I've done a lot of research on this problem, and others have reported both R15 and R17 as having been grossly overheated, enough to obliterate the markings. I have not been able to locate a schematic.

I'll take some photomicrographs of the toasted R15 on Monday, and post them here.

[Dave125]

Re: Whirlpool Refrigerator LED lights flickering

a guy at work soldered on a 1.8kOhm resistor to replace the R15 resistor and the lights came on! I'll test it out in the fridge tonight