Miele Induction Hob Problems 2.0

 Miele Induction Hob Problems 2.0

The Miele hob has gone wrong again. The previous fix was a relatively simple capacitor replacement. This time things are not so straightforward. The initial fault was that the hob tripped the RCB in our fuse box when an attempt was made to turn on either of the front two rings. This happened several times. 

The hob was removed to the workshop to see what could be done. Once wired up there the controls report an FE60 error whenever the hob is turned on.

I managed to find some documents online that said that FE60 was a communication error. After a few hours of going round in circles I decided to buy some replacement PCBs. After swapping all of them into the hob I continued getting the FE60 error. So still no working hob. A cheap-ish hob came up on ebay so I bought that and tried that out. Absolutely amazingly that hob came up with the exact same FE60 error. After ruling out an airborne electrical virus of some sort I finally found out what the problem was when I tried operating the hob with the lights out in the workshop. The lights I was using were interfering with the touch sensors used to control the hob. I suspect the code saw that as a communication error with the push button PCB and reported the FE60 error. 

How do you fix FE60?

Operate the hob with the dark glass cover in place. 

So, hob was replaced in the kitchen with a completely new set of PCBs. As I now have two hobs and about three sets of PCBs I have enough spares to last for a while and can completely swap electronics.

A few days later the RCB trips again. This is with completely different PCBs, so I now think that there's a dodgy piece of equipment somewhere in the house and that caused the leakage current to go up. Induction hobs are known to have high leakage and that pushed the RCB over it's trip limit.

At least I now have spares for the hob for about three decades...

Miele induction Hob FE32 Problem Update

The post a while back that detailed my fix to our Miele induction hob has been quite popular and, I hope, useful to people. I thought I'd have a dig around to see if I had any more information about the fix process.

I found some more photos, which may be of use. I'll put them all here, just in case.
This is the mains input connection area, we're in a 240V area, this will probably change for different voltages.

 This is the PCB that had the problem, I removed it to do the replacement of the capacitors. The problem capacitors are bottom left, either side of the coil.

 

Here's a couple of close-ups of the capacitors with the problem:

I found this video on YouTube, which has details of a fix that looks very similar to mine:

German Fix Video

Miele Induction Hob Problem

Miele Induction Hob Problem

We've had a Miele KM5731 for nine years or so, it took a while for me to fit it after we bought it, so it's probably been installed for more like 8 years. Anyway, a few days ago it started to give an error code of FE32.This is the hob, it has four induction coils and some touch buttons:

The error code appears in the power level displays:

Once the error code appears the hob is unusable. The instruction manual isn't much help, it says turn it off and on again. Well, that might work, but it's got progressively harder to conjure away over the past few days. A search on the internet resulted in many useless sites and one very useful Dutch site. From that site it transpires that there are a couple of capacitors on the power PCB that can pop and lead to this error code. I took the hob apart and had a look and indeed there were two capacitors with bulging tops.

They are both 470uF 25V electrolytics, this one has split and opened:

This one has just expanded on top:

I ordered some new high quality capacitors to replace these two and also some to replace the other electrolytics on the PCB. These arrived today and I have replaced the capacitors. So far no sign of FE32, but we'll have to see over the long term whether it's fixed or not.

Interestingly the decent quality (Panasonic) capacitors I ordered were identical to the ones fitted, except for the date code, apart from the two that had popped. So it looks like maybe there was a supplier issue with those two.

UPDATE 13th February 2018
So far there's been no re-occurrence of the problem, so it looks like the capacitors were the problem.

UPDATE 25th March 2021

I have made a video of the disassembly of my hob, it's here:

https://youtu.be/MCJaZrRvgdE