The plate does not spin in the microwave: why and what to do?

The device of the microwave oven tray, which is respon­si­ble for the uni­form cook­ing and heat­ing of food, mal­func­tions occur. More­over, the oven itself con­tin­ues to work, but the plate stops rotat­ing. There can be sev­er­al rea­sons, as well as ways to repair. This is what we will ana­lyze in our arti­cle.

Reasons for the lack of rotation of the pallet

There are only a few mal­func­tions in which the microwave plate does not spin. More­over, they can eas­i­ly be cor­rect­ed with their own hands, since the rota­tion device has a sim­ple struc­ture. The caus­es of fail­ure may be the fol­low­ing:

• the plate is not set cor­rect­ly;
• mal­func­tion of the gears of the pal­let dri­ve gear­box;
• a failed engine;
• poor qual­i­ty of con­tacts;
• bulb burnout.

Bro­ken engine

It is worth not­ing that the most com­mon rea­sons why the pan does not spin is its incor­rect posi­tion or an engine fail­ure that has occurred. The wind­ing may burn out in the motor due to sud­den pow­er surges, or drops of deter­gents and water have entered the motor.

Reduc­er fail­ure

A mal­func­tion of this part of the microwave oven is much less com­mon. More gears suf­fer here, which even­tu­al­ly get eat­en and begin to wedge and slip. This phe­nom­e­non is espe­cial­ly com­mon in mod­ern mod­els. Since ear­li­er ver­sions used met­al gears, and mod­ern man­u­fac­tur­ers often install plas­tic ones. This affect­ed the price, but in the end the qual­i­ty became much worse.

In the event of a mal­func­tion of the motor or gear­box, it will be nec­es­sary to change the part com­plete­ly, since it is no longer suit­able either for con­tin­ued oper­a­tion or for any repair.

You have to buy a motor. You should not buy cheap ones that cost about 150–300 rubles. As a rule, their ser­vice life is lim­it­ed to a year. It is bet­ter to spend mon­ey and buy an engine at a high­er price, but with high-qual­i­ty com­po­nents.

Lack of pow­er

In this case, you will have to look for a solu­tion to the prob­lem in the microwave con­trol unit. It is quite dif­fi­cult to replace this part on your own, as knowl­edge in the field of elec­tron­ics is nec­es­sary so as not to increase the num­ber of break­downs. In this case, it is rec­om­mend­ed to return the oven to a repair ser­vice.

Bulb break­age

This is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. In some microwave ovens (espe­cial­ly in old­er mod­els), it is not uncom­mon to encounter this phe­nom­e­non: there is a series cir­cuit in which a light bulb is includ­ed. If it burns out, then the motor, accord­ing­ly, stops work­ing. This design is very unfore­seen. But the solu­tion to the prob­lem is the sim­plest — replac­ing the light bulb.

Engine faults and replacement

A motor fail­ure is a com­mon cause of a microwave oven run­ning but the plate not spin­ning. At the same time, it doesn’t mat­ter what the prob­lem is: in the gear­box or in the wind­ing, in any case, you will have to change the motor.

This is how the engine that pro­duces rota­tion looks like from the out­side. It is worth briefly talk­ing about the design:

• pow­er ter­mi­nals. They are attached to a pow­er source and it is thanks to them that ener­gy is sup­plied to the motor for work;
• motor shaft. Direct­ly rotates the pal­let;
• gear­box cov­er and motor hous­ing. Pro­tect the inter­nal ele­ments of the engine from the effects of the exter­nal envi­ron­ment. In par­tic­u­lar, from the ingress of liq­uid or pieces of food.

For a bet­ter idea of ​​what needs to be done, we rec­om­mend that you watch the fol­low­ing video:

For the full oper­a­tion of the engine in the microwave, it is nec­es­sary that it has low speed and high torque. In addi­tion, it should not be expen­sive to man­u­fac­ture.

The ide­al solu­tion for microwaves was a syn­chro­nous motor with low pow­er (only 4 watts). Such motors make from 3 to 7 rev­o­lu­tions per minute and are able to turn a plate loaded with sev­er­al kilo­grams.

Now for the replace­ment. Absolute­ly every­one can do it, even a per­son far from tech­nol­o­gy. You just need to fol­low the instruc­tions in the pic­ture and be able to use the tools:

It is strict­ly for­bid­den to turn the shaft on the gear­box when the motor is in your hands and you are touch­ing the ter­mi­nal. This will lead not only to com­plete dam­age to the gear­box, but also to a very strong elec­tric shock in the amount of 220 V.

How to determine the malfunction of the engine?

• Reduc­er. It’s all about the gears here. Take the engine apart and look at it from the inside.
  This is what the new gear­box looks like. The gears of the faulty device are either worn out or bro­ken off.

• Rolling the motor shaft. Such a break­down is most often asso­ci­at­ed with human neg­li­gence. Since it occurs dur­ing a strong over­load or man­u­al brak­ing of the shaft. There­fore, always read the instruc­tions for the cor­rect use of the device. If the max­i­mum load is indi­cat­ed there, then you should not exceed it. Make sure that the plate does not touch the inner edges of the microwave, cre­at­ing an arti­fi­cial drag.

• Short cir­cuit of the motor wind­ing. A mal­func­tion of this kind is quite dif­fi­cult to deter­mine with­out a spe­cial device — an ohm­me­ter. When mea­sur­ing resis­tance, the norm will be from 12–16 ohms, if the engine is designed for a volt­age of 220V. It can be low­er (for exam­ple, 30V or 21V), then the stan­dard resis­tance has a frame from 100 to 200 ohms. If the mea­sure­ments go beyond these val­ues ​​or “infin­i­ty” is dis­played, then this indi­cates a bro­ken wind­ing.
  In the absence of an ohm­me­ter, it is pos­si­ble to deter­mine the mal­func­tion, but it will be more dif­fi­cult. The main thing to remem­ber is that the short cir­cuit of the wind­ing is accom­pa­nied by a strong heat­ing of the motor. This is deter­mined by an ordi­nary inspec­tion of the details.

Poor quality of contacts in the motor

Very often, this aspect is sim­ply ignored. But this is very impor­tant, since the cur­rent pass­ing through the ter­mi­nal is approx­i­mate­ly 16 amperes. And even an increase in resis­tance by one ampere can affect the reduc­tion in motor pow­er. To avoid such a prob­lem, it is nec­es­sary to firm­ly press the con­tacts to the pow­er source with pli­ers.

Bulb replacement

Some­times the rota­tion of the shaft is direct­ly relat­ed to the oper­a­tion of the light bulb in the microwave. For­tu­nate­ly, fix­ing the prob­lem is easy enough. You just need to replace the failed part. It is done like this:

• The cov­er is removed. In most cas­es, it has a U shape and is attached to the rear pan­el with self-tap­ping screws. A lamp will be vis­i­ble in the hole that illu­mi­nates the microwave;

This is what the microwave looks like with the cov­er removed.

• Pull the bulb hold­er out of the air duct and unscrew it. Replace the old lamp and assem­ble the cas­ing back. After that, the per­for­mance of both the lamp and the microwave motor is checked.

• If the lamp and motor are still faulty, then the prob­lem lies in oth­er parts, for exam­ple, in the elec­tron­ics or in the cir­cuit. In this case, the best solu­tion is to con­tact the ser­vice cen­ter. In the case of a valid war­ran­ty, it is bet­ter to imme­di­ate­ly send the oven for repair, as self-inter­ven­tion can make the microwave unre­pairable.

The vast major­i­ty of mod­ern microwaves use light bulbs with a pow­er of 20V and with an E‑14 base. Some­times it turns out that the design does not pro­vide for a thread, so it is not pos­si­ble to unscrew the lamps. You can buy them in tech­ni­cal stores.

Incorrect pallet installation

Among oth­er seri­ous break­downs, the lack of rota­tion of the pal­let may be due to improp­er instal­la­tion. See if the wheels of the plate match the rails in the microwave.

This point should be paid spe­cial atten­tion if your mod­el has a cage with rollers. Since they very often go off the rails and the plate stops rotat­ing.

Warranty and self-repair

It should also be not­ed that with inde­pen­dent inter­ven­tion in the integri­ty of the case, the guar­an­tee is com­plete­ly can­celed.

There­fore, before try­ing to fix the microwave your­self, make sure that the war­ran­ty peri­od has either expired, or you are 100% con­fi­dent in your abil­i­ty to repair. Oth­er­wise, you will have to pay for it out of your own pock­et. Some­times 2/3 of the price of the microwave oven itself is giv­en for repairs in the ser­vice.

All war­ran­ty con­di­tions are spec­i­fied in the instruc­tions or con­tract upon pur­chase. It is advis­able to always read this para­graph care­ful­ly so as not to get into dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions in the future.

If the plate in the microwave does not rotate, then fix­ing it is easy. You just need to make a lit­tle effort and be able to use the tools. Of course, if you have a war­ran­ty, then the best option would be to give the oven to a ser­vice where it will be repaired for free.