Electric Stove

[don &/or Lucille]

Antone come across this before? One of the small elemets wont turn on when dial is turned on 1 but needs to be put on three before heating

[dpb]

Yeah, need new control--they are simple rheostats in essence and can develop dead spot.

--

[Don Phillipson]

Better repost clarifying what you mean. It sounds as if one top burner element (1) fails to heat when its unique control is switched on, (2) heats when the other three controls (for three other burners) are switched on. This seems dangerous.

[jeff_wisnia]

I concur, but they sure aren't rheostats. If they were they'd dissipate as much heat as the element itself when set for "half heat", and would get hotter than hell themselves.

I'm remembering how they worked from many years ago. Back then they were simple pulse width modulators based on thermostatic action mechanically modified by the setting of the temperature control knob.

Do they still work on that principle guys?

Jeff

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, No.Bi-metal based mech. control is gone. Now it is electronic like light dimmer.

[terry]

Interesting. We still use old stoves, and have only very occasioanlly replaced one of the controls. But yes the older controls do click in and out when set to anything other than maximum. Agree; in the case of this OP replace the control. Once or twice in some 50+ years have seen more sophisticated control that incorporate a temperature sensor tube that feeds back the temperature of the heating element to the control itself. Very rare IMO. Not familiar with newer solid state/electronic controls but guess they are similar to a heavy duty light dimmer-switch? Some form of triac maybe?

[don &/or Lucille]

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Nothing wrong with that. At 1, the current flow is so low, you can hardly feel the heat.

[gfretwell]

That is true. The 1 and 2 settings are just for holding a little heat in an already warm pot. It would take forever to actually raise the heat on much with that setting but it is great if you are just keeping dinner warm without burning the bottom of the pan. These are also far from lab grade instruments and I doubt any of them are the same at these low numbers.

[don &/or Lucille]

[gfretwell]

If it bothers you, replace the control. They just plug in and they are $10-15 at the appliance parts place. This is really a pretty crude controller that simply uses a heated bi-metal strip and a contact to select the duty cycle of the element. Manufacturing tolerances are slave to a cheap price.