Re: Induction hob question

Less than what?

The ceramic is not a hot plate. It's simply a way of supporting the pans I would assume that the hobs do not draw much power in the absence of a iron or steel pan.

Having used just about everything in my life, induction hobs are my favourite.

For hob based cooking, anyway.

Clearly they are not grills and if you want to do authentic wok-ery you need gas or charcoal

They don't draw any without something to induce a current into.

Our works off a 13A socket concealed inside the kitchen cabinet. So does the convection oven below.

Our Bosch oven (13A plug) has a grill built into it.

Of course, I have little idea how to use it. That's someone else's responsibility. The knobs and buttons are a mystery to me.

The ceramic top is a sort of insulator!

On mine, even immediately after cooking on the hob, the top surface is not hot enough to give an instant burn and it's comfortable to touch after only a minute or so.

I switched after the cat burnt its foot on the old radiant hob long after it had been switched off and cost me a couple of hundred quid and it 14 days detention.

nib

Less than if the bottom of the pan was flat, because the inductive coupling will be less. "May" because I don't know how significant it is.

-- Richard

Don't be silly. No machine is 100% efficient

As is electrical theory

Ah. OK

Interesting theory.

Without knowing the shape of the magnetic field, I wouldn't presume to know

I assume the hobs are designed so the coils generate the maximum field within short distance ( ~5mm?) above the surface of the hob to allow for where, typically, embedded disks suitable material are embedded in some pans.

Assuming your pans are made of stainless steel which is magnetic ( one type is, one isn’t) so doesn’t need a plate and the ‘bend’ is limited to the distanced designed for, all should be fine.

Our hob ‘beeps’ if you lift the pan off with the ring on. You can tilt the pan - as you might when making an omelette- without it bleeping, although I’ve not measured the gap. I assume it is detecting when part of the field isn’t ‘covered’ by a suitable surface within range. You could try tilting a flat pan and measuring the gap before it beeps.

The power to the rings is controlled via software. Remove the pan from the hob and the software switches off the supply.

If it were not thus, every ring would be permanently on. And they're not.

Modern ones don't operate at all (except for checking every few seconds) in the absence of a substantial load. If you accidentally leave a spoon on the hob, you don't want it to get heated.

I don't know to what extent it was true, but in the early days of induction hobs there were reports of people being severely burnt by currents induced in rings and other jewellery.

-- Richard

A few years ago, a salesman in a kitchen showroom demonstrated an inductive hob by boiling some water in a pan - with a handkerchief between the hob and the pan. The water boiled very quickly, but the handkerchief was not damaged in any way.

Of no relevance whatsoever, but I'm reminded that Charlemagne is said to have had an asbestos tablecloth that he would throw into the fire after meals to clean it.

-- Richard

That is probably an arbitrary 'this isn't drawing the current it should be' alarm to prevent you laving 'plates' on with no pan. I wouldn't rely on it to mean anything more than that

Being arbitrary it is not a Boolean limit. (5mm good, 6mm bad)...

Basically as some point the 'rings' won't be heating the pan as well as they might

And what does the sofware draw?

Oh dear. Never heard of 'switches'

I thought you needed a ferromagnetic material. But its possible that strong magnetic fields could induce current in other metals

But its probably apocryphal

not much. It will be some kind of embedded processor. On the larger hobs it will also limit power, allow multiple "areas" to be combined when using oblong or oval cooking vessels such as a fish steamer and allow a large "split ring" to be used for smaller pans by only powering up the inner coils...

yes, nasty horrible things that tend to arc and then fail when switching inductive loads

Dave

In fact you are free to cover the top with a tea towel so that any spill ends up on that and you can just toss it in the washing machine with the other stuff instead of having to clean the top of the hob after cooking.

Unlikely that rings would be ferromagnetic material tho I suppose that very cheap stuff could be if made from the stainless steel which is ferromagnetic

But the other problem is that the ring is FAR too small to be detected and so the induction hub wouldn't even see it so wouldn't be transmitting any power to it

It's a myth

Charlemagne doing his own housework...

I know you said "is said to have", but I don't think it passes the sniff test.