As I recall, while living in Denmark (1980-1984) and twice in Germany
(1977-1978 and 1986-1987), U.S. made washing machines were three-phase,
to my best knowledge. The European power sources were single-phase,
resulting in a lot of American friends not heeding sound advice and
burning up their washers on the first load of clothes. Even with a
step-up transformer (110V to 230V) U.S. military personnel experienced
a large number of motor failures.
We shipped a large refrigerator to Denmark and then later to Germany,
used it on a transformer and had no problems as it had a single phase
motor. Our own neighbors did not follow the norm and even with a
transformer burned up their washing machine on the first run.
George Campbell
Charleston, SC
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