Help - Broken Toaster!
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silentbrown

Original Poster:

10,504 posts

140 months

Monday 18th March 2024
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Minor crisis in the SB household. One half of our somewhat ridiculous Sage AKA Breville "smart" toaster has packed up.


Basically the buttons/lights on the LHS have a mind of their own. Much faffing with security screws and disassembly, and the fault was isolated to the buttons/lights PCB for the left side. (luckily the two halves are entirely independent, so you can swap over to find the fault).

It's a straightforward single-side through-hole PCB, just LEDs, resistors and switches. Nothing active at all. No obvious dry joints, solder whiskers or broken tracks. Switches all work ok with continuity tester, resistors all measure sensibly OK too, so I'm a bit stumped.

My best guess is there's something hinky with one of the switches so I'm going to replace those and re-flow the other joints. any other suggestions welcome...



I was expecting the motors to give out long before anything else, but they're working fine.

Simpo Two

91,471 posts

289 months

Monday 18th March 2024
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Motors?

I see that it has a button marked 'crumpet'... it could be worth £189.99 just for that spin

C5_Steve

7,641 posts

127 months

Monday 18th March 2024
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Simpo Two said:
Motors?

I see that it has a button marked 'crumpet'... it could be worth £189.99 just for that spin
I have the same toaster, I didn't pay for it in full but having had it a while it's absolutely worth the money as ridiculous as that seems smile

No suggestions OP but faults on these seem to be rare, hopefully an easy fix if it's out of warranty.

silentbrown

Original Poster:

10,504 posts

140 months

Monday 18th March 2024
quotequote all
C5_Steve said:
I have the same toaster, I didn't pay for it in full but having had it a while it's absolutely worth the money as ridiculous as that seems smile

No suggestions OP but faults on these seem to be rare, hopefully an easy fix if it's out of warranty.
It's made it to five years, and I think we've gone through three kettles in that time...

57Ford

5,706 posts

158 months

Monday 18th March 2024
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Possibly the cable / connector is dicky which plugs into the pcb? When you tested it with the other pcb, you might just have bent it into a working position.
Could be as simple as a socket not fully engaged in the housing.

CorradoTDI

1,810 posts

195 months

Monday 18th March 2024
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Did you buy from Lakeland?

(Lifetime warranty if you did)

OutInTheShed

13,180 posts

50 months

Monday 18th March 2024
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It should be easy to check each switch with a multimeter, they look like standard momentary contact types.


Is there anything interesting on the back of the board? It's not unknown to have a 'surface mount' component or two on the wiring side.
May be a chip covered in a blob of black epoxy.

Removing components from cheap pcbs can result in tracks failing so, checking the less invasive options first is a good move.

fasimew

417 posts

29 months

Monday 18th March 2024
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If it's definitely an issue with the left pcb, i'd do a simple input-output continuity test on the switches, and the bang the board in the oven to reflow the solder if that's non conclusive.

Dave.

7,789 posts

277 months

Monday 18th March 2024
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I can't decide if this should be in the Council thread or the First World Problem thread....

hehe

silentbrown

Original Poster:

10,504 posts

140 months

Monday 18th March 2024
quotequote all
57Ford said:
Possibly the cable / connector is dicky which plugs into the pcb? When you tested it with the other pcb, you might just have bent it into a working position.
Could be as simple as a socket not fully engaged in the housing.
Possible, although the cable was uplugged/replugged several times to no avail.

silentbrown

Original Poster:

10,504 posts

140 months

Monday 18th March 2024
quotequote all
OutInTheShed said:
It should be easy to check each switch with a multimeter, they look like standard momentary contact types.

Is there anything interesting on the back of the board? It's not unknown to have a 'surface mount' component or two on the wiring side.
May be a chip covered in a blob of black epoxy.
No, nothing active at all. The switches all check out with a meter, although one seemed a bit 'slow', even though the continuitiy tester seemed happy.
OutInTheShed said:
Removing components from cheap pcbs can result in tracks failing so, checking the less invasive options first is a good move.
Yes, aware of that risk. Luckily it's simple single-sided board, no PTH, so a repair won't be impossible.

What's taxing me a little is that there's five switches, and seven distinct LEDs - yet everything comes through a 10-pin header... Time to do a bigclivedotcom "one moment please", and work out the schematic...


Edited by silentbrown on Monday 18th March 21:56

silentbrown

Original Poster:

10,504 posts

140 months

Thursday 21st March 2024
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silentbrown said:
My best guess is there's something hinky with one of the switches so I'm going to replace those and re-flow the other joints. any other suggestions welcome...
Switches replaced,10-way connector joint reflowed, and... woohoo

I really wasn't expecting that to make a difference. Now expecting heating elements to fail shortly!

littleredrooster

6,176 posts

220 months

Thursday 21st March 2024
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silentbrown said:
...Now expecting heating elements to fail shortly!
Be careful - it can spread like a rash through the whitegoods nearby.

Our toaster was first, it fell poorly and would only toast one slice at a time. Two days later, the microwave fell terminally ill, refusing to radiate anything. A trip to Argos cured both of those, but then...

...the following week the washing machine expired. Not even a red light on the front and all attempts at revival failed. The only thing I can think of is that they were all plugged into the same ring main and that obviously propogated the poorliness. The fridge is under close scrutiny!

An expensive ten days all told. frown

Edited by littleredrooster on Thursday 21st March 19:49

silentbrown

Original Poster:

10,504 posts

140 months

Thursday 21st March 2024
quotequote all
littleredrooster said:
An expensive ten days all told. frown
Law of Conservation of Brokenness: Every time you fix something, something else breaks.
Corollary : If something actually breaks spontaneously, something previously broken will mysteriously start working again.

CorradoTDI

1,810 posts

195 months

Thursday 21st March 2024
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littleredrooster said:
Be careful - it can spread like a rash through the whitegoods nearby.

Our toaster was first, it fell poorly and would only toast one slice at a time. Two days later, the microwave fell terminally ill, refusing to radiate anything. A trip to Argos cured both of those, but then...

...the following week the washing machine expired. Not even a red light on the front and all attempts at revival failed. The only thing I can think of is that they were all plugged into the same ring main and that obviously propogated the poorliness. The fridge is until close scrutiny!

An expensive ten days all told. frown
Probably a coincidence but maybe worth speaking to your DNO and getting the supply checked - you maybe getting voltage spikes.

Super Josh

319 posts

243 months

Thursday 21st March 2024
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silentbrown said:
What's taxing me a little is that there's five switches, and seven distinct LEDs - yet everything comes through a 10-pin header...
probably a separate wire for each LED, and the switches/resistors form a number of potential dividers to send a different voltage back down a single wire depending upon which switch is being pressed?

I have the same toaster and love the functionality but find it very inconsistent with the browning level and sometimes have to put it down multiple times, but sometimes it's perfect first time scratchchin


Josh

silentbrown

Original Poster:

10,504 posts

140 months

Friday 22nd March 2024
quotequote all
Super Josh said:
probably a separate wire for each LED, and the switches/resistors form a number of potential dividers to send a different voltage back down a single wire depending upon which switch is being pressed?
That's pretty hacky, but would explain why a single switch that's gone bad affects the behaviour of all other switches...

ATG

23,057 posts

296 months

Friday 22nd March 2024
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Firstly, congratulations to the OP.

Secondly, a warning to all toaster owners. Do not leave a frozen leg of lamb balanced on your toaster overnight to defrost. (Obviously the toaster wasn't switched on at any point in this operation. That would have been silly. It was just being used to lift the joint off the work surface to increase air flow and stop mice from being able to reach it.) The only flaw in this otherwise brilliant plan was the volume of condensation that poured into the toaster overnight. This made the little baby Jesus cry and the toaster's LEDs started flashing plaintively for help when I tried to use it the following morning. After removing 10 years worth of soaked burnt crumbs from it and hitting it with a hairdryer, it came back to life!