Hello Kitty Toaster

[larry moe 'n curly]

This toaster:

is supposed to burn a Hello Kitty face on one side of the bread, but it can't do that unless it's set so high that the other side (the non- Kitty side) of the bread burns. Is there any way to make it toast more evenly?

All the heating coils are in series, so I can't cut the power to just some of the coils by adding a diode.

The bread is held in baskets that clamp the bread on the sides when it's lowered, and I tried making one side of the basket hold the toast farther from the coils on the non-Kitty side, but it didn't help.

I'm thinking of covering the non-Kitty side with a screen to block some of the heat, but I can't find a suitable non-metal material (to prevent shock hazard).

[Joe]

Use bread that has little age on it. The problem is, your bread is typical super market stuff, really high moisture content. It's made that way because water content =3D higher profit. Or find someone to make up a batch of real home made bread and odds are it will do much better in the toaster.

Joe

[Vic Smith]

Sorry I can't help with electric stuff. But if nobody else can solve your problem you might try a cat stencil. Lay the stencil on the bread and brush some butter on before you put the bread in a toaster made for sane people. Not sure if the butter will catch on fire, but if it does move on to marmalade and other things until you get it right. Or see if somebody sells one-sided bread so there's no other side to burn.

--Vic

[Rich Grise]

Just use aluminum foil. The basket that holds the bread to be toasted is made out of metal, right? Just cut the foil to the exact size of the bread and put it flat against the side that would burn. If you keep the foil inside the basket, there should be very little shock hazard, but don't let your local safety nazi find out. ;-P

Cheers! Rich

[John S]

Asbestos.

[NT]

So you want less power on the plain side, relative to the stencil side.

- capacitor across plain side. But this will increase Pout on other side, so add a series choke to the toaster, or run it off a small transformer to cut a bit of voltage off the supply

- snip some of the R wire out of the plain side, and wire it in on the stencil side

- convert the lead to 3 wire, with a wire for the centre tap, and run it off a CT transformer plus a small series tf on one side, so the 2 element sides get different votlage

etc etc. How do you want to do it?

NT

[Jules Richardson]

Magnets!

[Paul Hovnanian P.E.]

What a waste!

I'd have made a toaster that prints an image of the Virgin Mary. I'd have the believers lined up for a slice.

[William Sommerwerck]

Flop the bread halfway through the cycle. The image won't be as strong, but at least the toasting will be even.

[gpsman]

Does it have a "bagel" setting? -----

- gpsman

[Matt]

Use an atomizer to apply a fine mist of water to the plain side before toasting?

[William Sommerwerck]

An asbestos pad?

[amdx]

We use the one sided bread in ours, works perfectly fine. Mikek

[amdx]

Mica sheets.

[Vic Smith]

Excellent. I've looked through many boiler water level sight glasses which were mica lined, but didn't think of it. I see eBay has mica sheeting for sale, and elsewhere.

--Vic

[Vic Smith]

Not bad, not bad at all.

--Vic

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

Is it a 100 volt Japanese model you are trying to use on 120 Volts in the US?

Geoff.

[William Sommerwerck]

It would be a lot easier to make a moebius bagel.

[Michael A. Terrell]

Stay away from the Klein bagels. You have to put the toaster inside to heat them. ;-)

[aemeijers]

I think one of those special toasters came as a built-in in Heinlein's tesseract house.