SWMBO says the microwave oven doesn't work properly. She says that sometimes the food comes out cold or at least, not as hot as it should be. Can a microwave oven fail in this way? I thought it would be an all or nothing scenario, rather than a gradual or intermittent loss.
We have been using the microwave whilst I have been working (slowly) on the kitchen and I agree that sometimes I do put the items back in for a few more minutes of cooking.
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!
"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,
2 quid for a new one, of prolly 50 quid for a bloke to repair it, depends if he put the job down as a fuse replacement, or makes a load of shit up to pad the bill out, none of which the average customer could check, as they are so shit scared of the workings of a microwave,
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 shit 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.
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.
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.
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.
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....
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