I Tried to Be Green!

Yes I see your point but we have to look at the bigger picture. Microwaves are very dangerous things and it just would not do to go encouraging the public to go poking about inside. You may well know what you are doing, but lots of people would not and could end up shocked or microwaving their heads or defeating saftey devices or having microwaves all over the place everytime little Jack makes a baked potato.

I think for this reason manufacturers of microwaves make them hard to open and hard to get parts... and a good thing too. The environmental thing to do is to make microwaves so well built that they run for years and years. Problem is, how does a company that makes such a thing ever get to sell another to the same customer and secondly.. such a well made one would cost a bit and thirdly people love to waste money on things that look up to the minute. And yes you are right..in comparison all the recycled plastic bottles dont seem like much...but maybe that has more to do with people feeling that if they do their bit of recycling plastic bags then they need not feel guilty about popping round the shops in the tank (or whatever they own) for a bottle of loo cleaner.

Yeah, but they do the same thing for coffee makers and chainsaws and bread machines etc.

Good point, but its not people on this forum who need keeping out of toasters and so on. Polls show that 40 to 45% of Americans think we did not evolve from apes. That level of science means they should be kept out of toasters (with security screws and unavailibility of parts) for their own good and the good of their kids who would also be in the house when it burnt down...The inconvenience you suffer in trying to repair these things is an part a tax you pay for the daftness of others and is in part a result of low cost manufacturing not lending itself to servicing ease or repair parts being kept in stock. Yes, probably its also true that manufacturers would rather you bought another than fix your old one.

I don't know how to break the news, but I don't think people evolved from apes. I went to the zoo the other week, down by the chimp house. It was like one of those damn optical illusions - depending on how you squinted, you couldn't say which side of the bars had the higher lifeform. Ach du lieber!

Kramarat,

Don't be so hard on yourself over the demise of an old friend. Even in it's current state, you can have it help mankind in some profound way. I want to give you some kind words of comfort in this difficult time in your life.

I do think of a commercial on TV that is appropriate, it involves throwing a tissue box. Aside from that let me state my case for a new beginning for your microwave.

Those little wonders do have an afterlife. All gardeners would love to have a seed starter, or more perfect, a seed incubator. All that is needed is a self contained unit that will perform this function. Yes you quick minded little fellow, the dead microwave.

• It is a sealed unit keeping out the pest. No little critters eating or digging here.
• The interior is smooth and bad germ resistant. Easily cleaned and resists bacteria.
• A built-in fan to bring in the fresh air. Crucial for seedlings.
• An interior light fixture. Great for adding necessary light and heat.
• Did I mention a white interior. Reflecting light all around the seedlings.
• Even has a viewing window. WOW!

All the traits necessary for the perfect seed starter and seedling incubator. You could even modify the timer to cycle your light on and off or just add a 24 hour timer of your own. If you want to separate the temperature from the light you could add a heating element and thermostat control.

If done correctly you could sell it on eBay as a seed starter/incubator for some cash. So you see your little friend can still give you some love or can supply you with some cash so you can go buy some.

Green in both ways...

Boy I had fun doing this one. Thanks Kramarat!

Thanks rcf,

I'm feeling much better now.

You've had this for a while. I think it's cool.

In my home state, and many other rural areas, teenagers would have destroyed this long ago.

My brother is building a mail box out of 1/4 inch pipe because his mailbox is on a lightly traveled road.

_{You can't shoot 'em, too many people know they're alive.}

Brilliant! 10/10 for Australian inventiveness!

Thanks

Time: done 2 hours after giving up on repairs.

Tools: bench press, M6 drill bit, Drill press, tape measure, .

Materials: Micro wave, old tent poles, old paint samples, 8 self cutting screws, Numbers from old letterbox.

Others: Neighbor keeping the beers coming.

Bobs part of the extended family. Coming to think of it its more like 9 years that we have it.

John, just down the road, made his letterbox bullet proof and set in concrete. He claimed nobody would be able to move it. Well, "they" did and it left a whole in the ground and some scratch mark down the road. Hilux, you know the ones. Mates of old John which was found out later. We pissed our selves laughing when they bragged about it in the pub.

Police? Nahh, all in good fun, Ky.

Karamat - saturday/sunday garage sale. Go buy one $ 20/-

You spent over $ 500/- of your man-day engineering time.

Good thinking ky.

All is not lost. I did come up with a simple way to remove the screws on the back. I actually didn't fashion a tool, but used a cutting wheel to cut a groove and convert them to regular slotted screws. Quick and easy, I'll save that one in the memory banks.

My wife is going to use the heavy glass turntable to hold a table top holiday display, a savings of $15 if she bought a platter at the store.

The stainless steel shell will be cut into new burner covers for my gas grill, saving me about $20. Plus, I did salvage the nice heavy cord from the back....might need it someday.

The rest of it, I should be able to throw in the metal bin at the dump.

Guest, I have to disagree with you about the danger of taking these things apart. Only a person that thinks like an engineer would even think of taking anything apart, an element of danger only adds to the fun.

Bottom line here is that it's just frustrating not to be able to fix anything anymore! I'm guessing that regardless of the manufacturer, the guts of most microwaves are probably made by a handful of suppliers. It would be nice if there were some kind of standardization, whereby people that decided to, could order up a new control board and replace it.

When you stop and think about it, recycling is fine I suppose, but if we were given back the ability to fix stuff, the impact would beat the hell out of any recycling program. Let's not forget, recycling takes a lot of energy, from beginning to end it often takes more energy to recycle something than it does to create it from scratch.

Here at my workplace, we're using a microwave I rescued from the trash bin some years ago. It, too, was arcing/sparking and blowing the fuse when I first tried it out. Turned out to be a bad Magnetron®. I was lucky enough to be able to buy a new Magnetron® from a local appliance parts store. The only way it was economical was the fact that my employer has an account there, so I was able to get the part at wholesale price.

I have always loved to keep electronics/white goods out of the trash heap by repairing them, but alas, they are making that process more difficult. It's harder and harder each day to get the parts needed to repair the items, or isn't cost effective to do so. <sigh>.

Tom D.

I think it might have been the first Alien film....in order to blow the mother ship up towards the end, Sigourney had to pass a sort of "is your mind working" test that was built into the self destruction equipment. Security screws do that with microwaves. If they can get past them then maybe we can consider the person sufficiently awake.

Some people,without any understanding, will open things up and mess with it just for fun ...see youtube. Others will open equipment because they dont have the fifty pounds to replace it. Operating voltage of a magnetron is...around 3KV. Also in microwave is a large H.V. capacitor that holds charge for a while when the microwave is powered down (even with bleed resistor). Some microwaves have beryllium oxide components.

Mind you.. as a kid I messed with stuff all the time and lived.