How to make anti-vibration stands for a washing machine?

How to make anti-vibration stands for a washing machine To reduce vibration, special rubber or silicone gaskets are placed under the feet of washing machines. They can be purchased at any spare parts store for SM, of which there are many in the city. But what should residents of remote corners do, who need to either purposefully go for stands, or order them by mail and wait a long time? It turns out there is a way to make anti-vibration stands with your own hands.

Stand made from an old washing machine mudguard

A mudguard is a plastic or rubber visor over a washing machine wheel that prevents or minimizes the splashing of dirt from under the wheels of the washing machine. If you have an old dismantled rubber mudguard, making a stand will be a piece of cake.

You need to place the splash guard under the foot of the washing machine and trace it along the contour: you will get a small hexagon.
Step back just a couple of centimeters from the edges of the resulting figure and draw another hexagon with a larger diameter.
In place of the small hexagon there should be a niche for the SM leg, but cutting out the hole completely so that the leg stands on the bare floor and is only surrounded by rubber makes no sense. Therefore, we begin to make a niche.
Take a sharp knife or scissors and cut out the inner hexagon.
Now you need to cut it lengthwise, in half, as if cutting off its upper part.
After this, all you have to do is insert the resulting trimmed hexagon into the larger one, and your footrest is ready.

Attention! If the rubber is soft, you can try to pick out the hole right away without cutting out the inner hexagon.But if it doesn’t work out, immediately proceed to the method described above, it is quick and not labor-intensive.

What else can coasters be made from?

As you probably already understood, the basis of any stand for the SM leg should be high-quality rubber. Accordingly, you can get it and make stands for the legs of a washing machine not only from an old splash guard. Rubber is used to make washing machine mats, irrigation hoses, rubber boots and the same tires. Tires must be used carefully, and the wire must first be removed from them.

As for the thickness of the rubber, it does not have to be impressive initially. Of course, if the rubber is immediately thick, there will be less work, but if you only have thin material at hand (for example, from boots), do not despair. Make several blanks and then glue them with high-quality glue.

Do you need stands?

There is an opinion that under ideal conditions the machine does not require stands. If the floor is hard and well leveled, vibrations will be minimized, since the “filling” of the washing machine is already equipped with shock-absorbing devices.

But sometimes the washing machine makes a lot of noise and moves extremely actively during operation, especially during the spin cycle. This may be due to the following phenomena.

This is just your model. Narrower washing machines tend to make more noise and vibrate more. Some of them don't even have a balance control system. To reduce vibration levels, these models are equipped with additional weights, but they do not always cope.
Problems with bearings. It would seem that the obvious solution to the problem is to change the bearings, and you’re done.But the trouble is that to replace the elements you will have to disassemble the entire machine, and in addition to purchasing new bearings, the work of a specialist in this case will be very expensive. But there is nowhere to go; if repairs are needed, they cannot be put off.
Failures in the depreciation system. Over time, shock-absorbing elements wear out and cease to cope with the tasks assigned to them. It is better to make repairs immediately and enjoy the normal functioning of the unit.
There is a foreign object between the tank and the drum. You can solve this problem yourself by removing the interference through the hole in the heating element.

So, in the end, do we need stands for the SM legs, or not? Of course, if the washing machine does not make noise and practically does not vibrate, then there is no point in bothering with stands. If the vibration is strong, and you have checked all possible causes for this and found no problems, then you should put pads.