It's an over load error. Don't put alot of laundry in the drum.
Copy and Paste from the service manual
- Motor overloaded due to too much laundry (Nonsensing)
- The motor hall sensor terminal is not connected.
- PBA fault
- The motor driving error from the PBA is weak.
: Unstable relay operation, etc.
This error
occurs when an
interference is
generated due
to too much
laundry, etc.
I took out all the clothes and tried to restart it - E3 code still came up
If the washer fails on you (as it did me) at around the 2yr mark and you have not or were not 'overloading" it at the time you will find that this problem has little to do with overloading and is in fact all to do with inferior grade motor connector on the potted (covered in a thick coat of varathane) high voltage triac driver bard (PBA) on the back of the control panel/computer assembly that does not carry enough current, thus eventually generating enough heat in one or the other motor drive pins that eventually causes one to become burnt and unsolder itself from the potted underside.
The suspect medium grade 6 pin molex drive motor connector is in the upper center of this board numbered CN4 located between the reversing relay (relay 3) and the 1200-1400 rpm high speed relay (relay 4). The (overheated likely due to looseness or contamination) motor drive pins are numbered 1 and 3 on the cable's connector colored orange and gray respectively. Pin 2 is empty. The other three pins (purple, yellow, blue) are for the tach.
To troubleshoot the E3 fault, first pump out (drain) the washer and wait till the door unlocks.
Then while "End" is still showing on the display, quickly open the door and rotate the tub fast by hand twice rapidly in one direction then twice rapidly in the other. if the tach (Hall speed/dir sensor) is working, the display will promptly announce "bE" .
Next unplug the machine and remove the front control panel. To do this it must be unstacked and the top lid must be loosened from back and slid back, then the two screws either side of the soap dispenser removed. The front control panel will then lift off it's top hooks. It's wiring is bundled very short, so just be gentle.
All the connectors on it are well differentiated and have (little bottom) plastic anti-vibration latches on them which must be squeezed to unplug them. To do the next test just unplug the 6 pin 5 wire CN4 harness plug at middle-top between the two relays..
When you unplug CN4 note any burnt discoloration or bled-out solder on the pins and sockets of pins 1 and/or 3.
At this point with the power off you can verify if the DC drive motor is working by hooking a DC multimeter to pins 1 and 3 of the wiring harness connector. Since a (good) DC motor is also a fairly good DC generator, with the DC meter connected to the orange (pin1) and gray (pin 3) wires you should measure +0 to +150 MV DC spinning the drum clockwise and -0 to -150Mv DC spinning the drum counterclockwise.
Beyond this you need a technician to repair or replace the driver board assembly and burnt cable connector pin(s).
The relevant PBA replacement assembly part number is MFS SB12NB-00, the front control/logic board needs to be hand soldered to a new one, since it is glued to the plastic frame, Samsung may offer a 'core' replacement/exchange value for merely damaged ones with this flaw.
I simply shallow-drilled the back, scraped out the goop and soldered two new wires to the board tracks after yanking out (and drilling) the inferior quality offending two cheap 2 Amp motor power pins. I ground down the harness molex housing to an inline three pin size and added a more robust, separate 2 pin (10 Amp) motor powering connector
Just a footnote, to the motor power fix, If you have a very fine set of needle files you can just re-solder the damaged pin bottom-side through your drilled hole in the plastic base/frame,and then go topside in the connector housing and file the the four sides of the little male pin clean. Extracting, cleaning and re-tensioning the square bifurcated female wire clip in the harness is another matter, you could just put in some fine copper wire ends after lightly filing it's inside contact surfaces clean. This would leave you with a repair little better than the original but make it work. THE 'potting" water/steam-proofing looks like a hard clear coating but is actually just a soft 'silicone' type sealant easily [gently] scraped away from the printed circuit, once exposed by very very carefully shallow drilling the gray plastic underside of the PBA (power driver board assembly) with a safety pin. You should replace the scraped off part after re-soldered and tested with some regular kitchen/bath silicone sealant.
One more thing, Samsung's Power-driver-Board Assembly's (PBA) sealing compound, intended to eliminate problems with doing hot washes on cold days clumps and scrapes off very easily, regular "silicone sealant" does not. This means either you should put some tape over the exposed underside of the printed circuit board after repairing the CN4 motor power pins BEFORE you seal the drill-hole in the plastic tray.frame with a dab of silicone, OR (more simply) just tape over the drill hole you made to get at the PBA underside of CN4 with some good electrical or duct tape, in case you ever need to get back in there. The external connector for the gray and orange motor power wires is the better, more permanent and more reliable long lasting fix. You can get a 20Amp DC connector-set at Walmart in the auto section for a few bucks to permanently end your washer's CN4 pins 1 and/or 3 Molex connector problems forever.
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