Just in time for Memorial Day, the Samurai Tech Academy and ApplianceZone.com are thrilled to team up to offer a unique scholarship opportunity for free appliance tech training to military veterans. It's our way of saying "THANKS!" to all military veterans for the sacrifices they've made for us by serving in the armed forces.
Learning a skilled trade, like appliance repair, is a great way to ease the transition back into civilian life if you're just coming off active duty. Skilled appliance techs are in great demand with lots of employment opportunities. It's also a great way to start your own business and be self-employed.
Scholarship recipients will have ½ of their tuition paid at the start of the Fundamentals of Appliance Repair training course at the Samurai Tech Academy, with the remaining tuition costs being reimbursed to the recipient pending completion of the course. The course must be completed within 90 days to fulfill the scholarship criteria for reimbursement.
ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS:
Applicant must be retired, honorably discharged, active duty, or a member of the National Guard or Reserve.
When there is a no-ice complaint, sometimes the icemaker is fine and instead the plumbing or installation is to blame. Low water pressure to a refrigerator can cause undersize icemaker cubes and result in the icemaker jamming during harvest. But how much water pressure do you need? And how do you determine what the pressure is? What does that look like?
The exact water pressure requirement for a particular make and model of refrigerator is specified in the installation manual, which no one reads. Nonetheless, it is there, so the manufacturers have made a good-faith effort to get that information out there. It's not their fault that most people who install wet appliances (hello, plumbers) and most appliance techs, for that matter, refuse to read these specifications or gloss over them with a "Yeah, whatever."
But there's good stuff in there! Most refrigerators require a minimum of 20 to 40 psi. The exact minimum is spelled out in the installation instructions. Most GE refrigerators, for example, require a minimum of 40 psi water pressure for the ice maker to work properly. Samsung requires a minimum of 20 to 30 psi depending on the specific model. As a rule of thumb, all refrigerator ice makers will work properly with a minimum of 40 psi water supply pressure.
But how can you tell what the water pressure is? Well, you could use a pressure gauge to measure it but, UGH!, what a freakin' hassle!
Wouldn't it be awesome if you could calibrate your eyeballs to tell when water pressure was less than 20 psi just by looking at a discharge stream from the 1/4" supply tube? Ya sure, ya betcha! And now you can do exactly that with the Samurai Calibrated Eyeball Water Supply Pressure Assessment Technique™ (SCEWSPAT, pronounced, "skew-spat").
Using my patent-pending SCEWSPAT technique, you can determine the pressure of any refrigerator icemaker water supply line using only your soon-to-be calibrated eyeballs! In this video, you will see what an inadequate water supply pressure looks like.
In general, if you disconnect the water supply tubing from the refrigerator, open the valve and see a lame, pee-pee stream of water, you done found a major problem, Hoss! That obvious problem has to be fixed first before you can determine if the icemaker is operating properly or not.
As mentioned in the video, an adequate water pressure (20 to 40 psi) exiting the 1/4" water supply tubing should be coming out with enough force to knock over a cup. At 20 psi, a 1/4" tubing is exerting almost a pound of force on the cup's sidewall. That's a lot and will knock over any cup!
Need more specifics? Okay, try this...
The specifications for the dispenser stream in a GE refrigerator is 13.5 oz/20 seconds. This is close enough to all the other manufacturer's specs that we can call this a universal spec.
Now, take a two-cup measuring cup (borrow from customer) run the dispenser and time it. If it doesn't fill 13 oz (or 400 mL) in 20 seconds, Houston, we have a situation. After doing this just a few times you will have calibrated your eyeballs so that you don't have to use the measuring cup/timer method again. Let's hear it for SCEWSPAT!
The Samurai Tech Academy is thrilled to announce that the long-awaited Advanced Schematic Analysis and Troubleshooting (ASAT) training course is finally open for enrollment! Master the troubleshooting principles taught in the ASAT course and you will be empowered with the skills and knowledge to troubleshoot any appliance!
With a dozen new Samurai-original presentations, the ASAT course distills down years of the Samurai's battle-hardened experience and training into sweet nectar that appliance techs can drink to become Master Samurai Techs! Each screencast presentation has a quiz to help ensure you are mastering the material and to apply what you've just learned. Master the skills and principles taught in the ASAT course and you can troubleshoot any appliance.
In the ASAT course, you will delve deeply into sophisticated and esoteric appliance circuit troubleshooting techniques. You'll learn how to use timing charts together with the schematic to troubleshoot problems; how to use Ohm's Law as a powerful troubleshooting tool to give you a clear understanding of how a circuit works; how to troubleshoot deceptive and tricky open neutral problems; and how to troubleshoot appliances with control boards, including multiple control boards and microprocessor boards.
But wait-- incredibly, there's more! You will also put your newly-found schematic reading and troubleshooting skills to the test in a challenging series of schematic lab exercises where you're given a tech sheet and schematic and then asked a series of quiz questions about them. The quiz is graded instantly.
These lab exercises are a powerful component of the ASAT course because you get to apply the principles you've learned in the screencasts on different tech sheets and schematics. The lab exercises use the actual tech sheets from real appliances and cover various brands (Frigidaire, GE, Whirlpool, Samsung, and Bosch) and appliance types (washer, stacked laundry, range, dishwasher, and refrigerator). The idea is not to give you monkey training on specific appliances, but rather to give you practice at applying the troubleshooting principles taught in the course.
The ASAT course requires a solid understanding of electricity, circuits, and troubleshooting, which can be learned from the Fundamentals of Appliance Repair course or the Basic Electricity Boot Camp (BEBC). The BEBC course is designed for the experienced appliance tech who wants to take the ASAT course but needs the prerequisite thorough training in basic electricity, circuits, and schematics. It is not offered as a stand-alone course, only bundled with the ASAT course. Read here for more details.
Graduates of the MST Academy courses are proud of their achievement, and rightly so! They have worked hard, sharpened their skills with our online appliance repair training courses, and their businesses and careers are already profiting from being a certified appliance technician.
If you have completed any of our technical courses and achieved the target scores required for certification, then show your accomplishment off to the world with this fine certificate, signed by the Samurai himself and mailed to you. Simply submit this form to us and we'll get 'er done.
As a multi-truck appliance repair operator, you need to be sure every one of your technicians is performing at the top of their game on every service call. Gone are the days when fridges and ranges used simple mechanical controls that a rookie tech could quickly understand and repair. Today’s appliances demand a level of technical expertise and interpersonal skills undreamed of even a few years ago.
For instance, in a state-of-the-art kitchen, all appliances can be networked and synced to perform tasks programmed remotely. Modern coffee systems custom-blend brews to individual preferences and even mix bean types to taste. Smartphone- and tablet-controlled ranges are in the offing, and kitchen robots can already take over the monotony of making the perfect risotto, among many other routine tasks. There’s even a 3-D food printer, no joke!
With so many technical advances coming from every direction every year, it’s hard enough to keep up with the technology without having to worry about assuring quality control for each service call to make sure customers are happy in sometimes challenging situations. That’s why continuing education for your appliance repair techs makes good business sense.
From new hires to old hands, your techs will benefit from continuing education in several important ways:
All of your technical staff will receive expert interpersonal skills guidance so you can be sure the service to your customers is of consistently high quality and customer satisfaction, no matter which tech handles the job.
New appliance service techs coming into your company will quickly come up to speed on important people skills and receive valuable pointers for conducting service calls when they enter a customer’s home.
If desired, we can customize training to the way things are done in your shop, again assuring consistent service quality across the board.
Continuing education not only gives your techs the confidence to meet new challenges on the job, it promotes loyalty to you and longevity in employment, a big benefit to you in reducing costly turnover and building a highly skilled staff — and securing your competitive advantage.
At Master Samurai Tech we specialize in developing every tech's skills — both professional and personal — to enhance their customers’ experience. It’s an investment in your staff that will pay off in enhanced customer satisfaction and more business for your company. Click here for more information on our Professional Development course!
Just in time for Memorial Day, the Samurai Tech Academy and ApplianceZone.com are thrilled to team up to offer a unique scholarship opportunity for free appliance tech training to military veterans. It's our way of saying "THANKS!" to all military veterans for the sacrifices they've made for us by serving in the armed forces.
