microwave light

Make, model etc..

Most of us are not telepathic!

What, you mean some of you didn't pick up that it's a Toshiba ER-6M2U/ UW? About 14 years old. Mike

Usually accessed by removing the outer casing not from inside the oven.

Bob

A lot have an unscrewable hatch on the side of the machine for bulb access. If there's no hatch you need to take the whole outer cover off

- beware of the lethal EHT supply in them though. And note the bulbs are typically not SES base, but a similar sized appliance lamp base.

NT

I asked a similar question here some time ago and the advice (unanimous IIRC) was that lethal voltages were around and it was best left alone. Buy yourself a torch. :-)

Surely these days there will be a suitable resistor across any big caps to drain the charge in a matter of seconds? I'd be surprised if they were not safe after being powered down for a minute.

There are usually resistors across such capacitors. They often go open-circuit.

Possibly but our microwave was made in "those days", probably about 20 years ago.

Really? Bet you can't guess what I'm thinking ?? WaveyDave

And a 15 year old Tosh is probably favourite for having a hatch for the lamp, and the OP says it did have one. What I cant quite understand, if the hatch wasn't for the lamp, what was it for?

Was this cover on the outside, or inside the cooking cavity? If inside, then I think you have removed the mica window that covers the antenna on the magnetron. The lamp is usually on the opposite side to this, look for some holes in the cavity.

newshound used his keyboard to write :

The discharge resistors can and do fail/ go open circuit. when they do, the caps can store the EHT for many hours.

I suggested that to SWMBO when the bulb in our microwave went. Apparently that idea wsn't good enough.

In "those days" things were made properly and microwave ovens effectively cost about thirty times the price nowadays.

It's the ones today made by illiterate slave/prisoner/child labour to sell for £27.50 including import duty and a margin for the supermarket plus shipping from China you need to worry about.

But don't make any assumptions, don't take any chances.

Derek

I see a vague empty vacuuous space ...

Derek

If you concentrate really hard I could tell you what your parents names are ....

The message from shorepot15 contains these words:

I have an old Panasonic that I inherited when my father died in 1995. That later went dark and after some years I eventually took the casing off to see what sort of bulb I needed to get. Turned out I didn't need a new bulb as the original was unscathed, just loose. Seemed it was not the first time that the bulb had come loose as someone had tried to restrain it with selotape. I just twisted it tight again and so far at least it hasn't come loose again.

Toby (who is not telpathic it seems) never followed up with information when the OP posted it! But we knew he wouldn't.

At this very moment I read the label on the side of this 'er uwave cap. It reads:-