I have a 700 watt Microwave( Whirlpool ) oven above the kitchen stove, its a micro/ exhaust fan combo.
Is it possible to have a bigger tube installed in order to up the watts, to at least 1100.
Also the oven is 10 yrs old, takes forever as it is to heat anything. There's a crack in the plastic trim on the door.( cosmetic)
I was never aware when I bought the oven that watts made a difference when cooking.
A new oven is going to cost me at least $275, I will install it my self.
Thanks Tom
Sharp and G.E. over the range micros are great and easy to install takes about 20 minutes.
I'm not sure this will answer your question but it may help. We recently installed a new over the range with outside vent connection. The vent pipe was 7 in. in size - and we had to buy an attachment that had a round hole to fit the vent on one end and it changed to a rectangle shape on the other end to fit the microwave.
We were putting in the oven to replace a regular vent hood over the stove so yours may be different. We had a choice of venting it to the outside or having it just filter the air and blow back into the room.
Someone on here can probably explain it better.
Dorothy
Hi,
Not without changing a lot of other parts in the high voltage system as well!!
If you want higher output, donate your old microwave to someone that can use it and buy yourself a new one.
jeff.
Appliance Repair Aid
Do you know how to install microwave tubes correctly? If you don't do it correctly you can cause high levels of microwave leakage, and I do mean high enough to cause skin burns and cataracts. And remember, you cannot reliably measure leakage with a cheap meter! Some of those meters will indicate tremendous leakage even with no microwave devices nearby (not even phones), while others will show zero leakage even when sitting inside a running oven. The only good meters are tuned specifically for the 2450 MHz frequency used by ovens and cost at least $300.
How much power is your oven putting out currently? You can measure this with a thermometer, glass or plastic bowl, and exactly 1 quart or
1 litre of tap water. Fill the bowl with the exact amount, and stir the thermometer in the bowl and record the temperature. Heat the water at full power for exactly 60 seconds, and then again stir the thermometer in the water and record the temperature. Assuming that you used 1 quart of water and a Fahrenheit themometer, the power in watts is 70 times difference of the beginning and ending temperature, but if you used 1 litre of water and a Celcius thermometer, the power in watts is 37 times the temperature difference.Microwave ovens naturally decrease in maximum power with time, maybe because the permanent magnet on the magnatron tube weakens, and it's possible that a 10-year-old tube is putting out only 50-70% its original power. Also the industry specifies microwave oven power differently now, by something called the "IEC method," that seems to give higher wattage numbers than the old method. You may want to test a fairly new oven to see how close the method described above compares to the IEC method.
Another way to boost microwave power is by increasing the size of the high voltage capacitor, and at least one Japanese company changed nothing else in their ovens rated from less than 500W to about 900W. But if you try this yourself, don't go more than 20% over the original size. After I changed the tube in our Sharp convection/microwave, I decided to try this trick by replacing the original 0.8uF capacitor with a 0.95uF, and I measured a proportional power increase. The new tube lasted about as long as the original, 8 years. By the way, some sources are far cheaper than others for microwave parts, and I've used Wondral/EPS (1-800-227-0104) and MCM Electronics. Also parts for some brands of ovens are much more expensive than others, with Sharps being among the cheapest.
No.
Than maybe there's a problem with it and it's not even working to what it is designed to do. If you're not going to have it looked into, you might as well just replace it.
JMO
Dan O.
- Appliance411.com
Your best bet is to put a new one in. It will save money. But to answer your question it is possible to upgrage a 700W to 1000W in many cases. It takes a combination of the transformer,cap, and magnatron. Sometimes the transformer is already capable and the connection on one leg of the input side can simply be shanged. I have one ten feet from me that I modified. This is too dangerous for people to play around with. You need to do it safely and be able to check for leaks and monitor it over time. People can check their own microwave's output with a container of water and a thermometer. The idea is to put two cups of water in a container with a loose lid and microwave it for two minutes. Measure the temperature increase that took place and multiply by 17 (maybe it's 17.25 or so?). I mark the ovens I repair so I can check when I come back.
I don't see how buying a new overhead or convection/microwave oven will save money compared to spending less than $50 in parts (magnatron, capacitor, diode, thermal cutoff), but it certainly is the only safe and sensible choice for anyone who doesn't know how to work on microwave ovens.
people
The problem is that transformers, at least new ones, are usually at least $70-100, and, as you've warned, if they're not wired right the person can be killed by about 1,000 volts. On the other hand a slightly larger capacitor for the voltage doubler is only $5-15, but simply replacing an old magnatron will usually produce noticeably more power because magnatrons weaken with use because some old ovens produce just half their rated power.
Is that any simpler than my suggestion of heating exactly 1 quart of water for exactly 1 minute and then multiplying the Fahrenheit temperature increase by 70?
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