Age of microwave

[petmad]

how do i know the age of my microwave ive got model no an serial number

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[Max Demian]

On 24/05/2022 14:32, petmad wrote:

> how do i know the age of my microwave ive got model no an serial number

You check the date on the receipt you got when you bought it. <g>

Why do you want to know its age?

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Max Demian

[Animal]

On Tuesday, 24 May 2022 at 14:32:34 UTC+1, petmad wrote:
> how do i know the age of my microwave ive got model no an serial number

Didn't give us much to go on did you :)

[Colin Bignell]

On 24/05/2022 14:32, petmad wrote:

> how do i know the age of my microwave ive got model no an serial number
>

Presumably you also know the make. If so, an email to the customer
service department of the manufacturer, giving the model and serial
number, should get you when it was made.

--
Colin Bignell

[Peter Able]

Take off the cover and look at the date codes on the electronic components.

< tin hat on >

PA

[Mike Clarke]

On 26/05/2022 21:55, Peter Able wrote:
> Take off the cover and look at the date codes on the electronic components.
>
> < tin hat on >

In particular keep well away from the scary big capacitor. It gets
charged up to several thousand volts with enough charge to give a
serious injury or worse. It can keep its charge for a long time after
being switched off so to be on the safe side leave the microwave
unplugged for a day or two before removing the cover.

[Andy Bennet]

On 24/05/2022 14:32, petmad wrote:

> how do i know the age of my microwave ive got model no an serial number
>

have you tried carbon dating?

[NY]

"Mike Clarke" <uceb...@milibyte.co.uk> wrote in message
news:t6qqv6$1jmn$1...@gioia.aioe.org...

Don't big capacitors tend to have a (maybe high) resistance in parallel
through which the capacitor can gradually discharge?

[Bob Eager]

If he touches the capacitor, he'll contaminate it with fresh carbon.

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[Adam Funk]

AIUI, yes, but very gradually.

[Harry Bloomfield Esq]

On 24/05/2022 14:32, petmad wrote:
>> how do i know the age of my microwave ive got model no an serial number
>>

If you open it up and look on the pcb, there will be IC's. IC's are
always marked with a week and year of manufacture in the form of wwyy.
The actual microwave will have been built soon after that date.

[Animal]

usually yes, but the Rs can go oc on occasion.
People often say stay away from the cap, but the killer volts are conducted by wires to remote parts of the machine. Easy for anyone that understands the situation, but a death trap for a newb that doesn't.

[Paul]

There are two dangers with microwave ovens.

1) Take the cover off and try and work on it, without
appropriate precautions.

2) The danger people don't seem to be aware of, is if
the capacitor arcs over, while the microwave is
cooking your lunch.

I was present for a (2), and the noise was loud enough,
I lost hearing in one year for ten minutes. I thought at
first I was fucked, and had a popped eardrum or something.
But the ear eventually started coming back.

The root cause in that case, is too many people at work
cooking bag after bag of salted buttered popcorn. This
coated the inside of the machine with conductive material.
Modern microwave ovens can have things like conformal
coatings to try and prevent this.

Strangely, the microwave oven was not damaged, and it
was still run-able the next day.

*******

The problem with the microwave, is the potential energy.

1/2CV^2 on the oil-filled cap, is a significant number.

It's three times the energy need to fire a
dye pulse laser.

And that's why, if and when it discharges, while fully
loaded, you don't want to be standing close to it.

That's the old style transformer-diode-cap 50Hz design.
The modern inverter design might have different safety
characteristics. Even though the inverter design is better,
companies *still* make the legacy kind.

*******

HV arc discharges release ultrasonic energy. One of my
chem profs at uni, was deaf in one ear, and all because
he did not wear hearing protection while working on
pulse lasers. He'd be the first guy to warn you about
the dangers of "many, smaller discharges" on hearing.
There was a second prof, who used to blow up shit behind
a perspex barrier (we don't know why), and his hearing
was a bit bad, but he still wasn't wearing protection.
He used an arc to "dispatch" stuff.

Those are my favorite kinds of elfen safety examples,
the walking and still-breathing kind. You can point to that
and say "this is why we wear hearing protection" :-/

But this is what happens when an elfen safety issue
takes a lot of attempts, and the degradation is slow
and steady. You can be tricked into not wearing protection.

To this day, when I start a microwave oven... I walk away.
I wonder why that is... I don't want to experience that
a second time.

Paul

[Paul]

Carbon dating might not be far off. They've been around for a while.

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1088040

"In 1940 British physicists discovered a way for generating invisible
electromagnetic waves that could bounce back undetected after contact
with a ship or plane.
...
Raytheon’s first microwave oven, the Radarange, was bought by a
Cleveland restaurant in 1947 for $3,000."

Another article gives specs.

"The first commercial microwave oven was tested in a Boston restaurant
in 1947. Later that year, Raytheon introduced the Radarange 1161. It
stood 5.5 feet (1.7 meters) tall, weighed 750 lbs. (340 kilograms) and
cost $5,000, according to Gallawa. It had to be hooked up to a water line
because the magnetron was water-cooled."

So if it has plumbing connections, then 1947 is a guess :-)

Paul

[Animal]

That wasn't a cap arcing, that was the muck in the cooking cavity.
Nukes have some other hazards too, but overall safety is much better than stove top cooking.

[jon]

On Fri, 27 May 2022 16:35:10 +0100, Andy Bennet wrote:

I don't trust any dating site.