Littermaid Repair 201
My littermaid broke again this week. One of my cats let me know it was having problems by peeing on the wall right in front me. He’s not good at subtlety.
Unfortunately it wasn’t the same problem as last time. Actually it was the opposite. It would go forward, but not back.
One of the first things I figured out was that it’s not that hard to take the moving arm out. Just pull the sides apart a bit and you can angle it out. That allowed me to move it back to the middle and observe it moving forward but not back.
I checked the switches at the front that were the problem last time and they were clear. Depressing them made it stop moving forward, but nothing would make it move back.
Since groping around blindly in a dirty litter box is one of my favorite things to do, I poked around and found two more switches in the back of the track. There’s one on each side and guess what? The one on the left was in a different position than the one on the right. In fact, it looks like some litter got stuck in there and was keeping it down. If either of those switches is down, the arm stops moving back, assuming it’s all the way back.
Getting to the sensor was interesting. It didn’t seem to open, so I had to pry it off the inside of the track. In doing so, I damaged it enough to let the switch up again. It went back just fine now. Great!
I put things back together, tested it out (uhh, with my hand, not actually USING it), washed my hands and tools, and declared victory.
If this whole software development thing goes south, perhaps I’ll be able to repair automated cat litter boxes for a living.
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Sounds like you know you stuff! Think you can help me? My wire that pushes or pulls the rake to the front and back popped at the place where it joins the rake bar. It appears that it pulls the rake forward but it won’t push it back, even though it doesn’t look like it should push it back. It won’t do anything. The cats are mad becacause it doesn’t look like their pottie and all are going on thr darn carpet! Please be my hero and tell me how I can fix the little wire to work again. Thanks to anyone who can help. These things are expensive!
October 18th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
The automated cat box is such a good idea, but the two Littermaids we owned were a real disappointment. Litter would get pushed into the mechanism whenever the cats pawed in the box. This seems like SUCH an easy design problem to solve. All one needs is a rubber cover for the track that fans out and closes as the comb moves forward and retracts. I’m surprised they haven’t changed the design in this way.
November 14th, 2007 at 8:20 am
my rake keeps moving continuously ….pushed little lever 7 times….reset according to littermaid help line……can you help?
March 2nd, 2008 at 2:09 pm
[...] A Day in the Life wrote this today. I think it is worth reading. Here is a little snippet:My littermaid broke again this week. One of my cats let me know it was … goes south, perhaps I’ll be able to repair automated cat litter boxes [...]