microwave oven failure

I thought that mine was doing that - things like defrosting bread just weren't working in the usual time. Puzzling, as I'd assumed that the output was either on full or off. It seems to be OK now, so I'm not trying any provocative maintenance!

Fred scribbled...

They shake and things come loose.

Not something I'd ever consider taking the back off.

"Artic" > sometimes the food comes out cold or at least, not as hot as it should

The missus fanny hammer shakes a hell of a lot more, and nowts come loose in it so far, she usually wears the brushes in the motors out first,

meh, i guess if it frightens you, then you are wise not to mess about, as worrying your about to get a few thousand volts up your arm will prolly make you more nervous and likely to touch the wrong thing.

Most the stuff that bites hard is usually shielded inside the case, and you can usually tell which bits your best not trying the PP3 juice test on,

BTW, the OP problem, could be the magnetron dying, or it could be the magnetron fuse loosing contact, it is a fairly common thing for the magnetron fuse to open due to fatigue, it's a long fuse to handle the high voltage, but a very very thin element for the very low current, so after a few years of the vibrations of the magnetron, the fuse wire breaks,

Food temps vary, servings & containers vary, memories are inaccurate etc, don't worry about it. If a nuke is dying you'll know about it.

Dont think I've ever had a microwave shake before

If the fuse lost contact it would burnt out promptly, so its not that.

Magnetrons dont vibrate

NT

Well the flow chart on here suggests the magnetron or capacator are to blame

This is a DIY group:-)

ARW scribbled...

Nothing like taking a sentence out of context is there.

"Artic" >

And what sentence is out of context??

i said a new fuse is £2, cost for someone not afraid to open up microwaves, tv's, smps's, inverters and so on, 2 tenths of f*ck all, i.e. a few minutes twiddling a screwdriver,

But if you take it to a 'repair man' he'll likely charge you 50 quid or thereabouts, as he charges for his time, repair shops love 'microwaves appearing to work, but not heating' jobs, 99% of the time it's that 2 quid fuse (well, likely less to them as they'll buy them in bulk)

But as the average punter is so s*it scared of the insides of a microwave, instead of writing 'replaced blown fuse, parts £1.20, labor: 5 mins, 50p' on the job sheet, He could write 'connect to specialised test equipment, perform extensive range of tests and diagnosed a faulty magnetically charged ionising semi refracting inverting syncroniser module, replaced module with new, parts £140, labor 3 hours: £150, charge for use of bovine excrement dispenser: £80' instead, and the customer would have happily paid and thanked him for risking his life fixing their highly dangerous appliance.

Hello Fred.

I used a couple of microwave ovens which gave similar results. The cause was that the timer used to confuse minutes and seconds. For example, I would set the oven to cook for 10 minutes and it would actually cook for 10 seconds. This was an intermittant problem which hasn't occurred for several years. My guess is that something occasionally did not initialise correctly when I switched power on to the oven.

Regards, Ian in Nottingham

And it's also not a blown fuse or a TV repair is it?;-)

I was just pointing out what is possible if you DIY. I could possibly have fixed the TV for 59p but I could not decide which of the caps was to blame so I swapped all three.

En el artículo , Artic

Many microwaves don't bother with an HT fuse, the theory being that as the transformer is designed to operate close to saturation under normal conditions even a dead short on the secondary does not make a great deal of difference.

be aware theyre part truth part popular recycled myths

NT

In article , snipped-for-privacy@care2.com scribeth thus

Good references those they are except that I'd not recommend discharging a cap with a screwdriver or a 100 K ohm resistor like it suggests. A few kilo ohms is quite sufficient, will do the job quickly and leave the discharge leads on the cap to stop it re charging until you switch it back on....

The Electrolux document is very good indeed.