- entry 2025/04/29

Am I a joke to you?

Last year (or was it the year before?), I repaired a cow-orker's bread maker. There's a video on YouTube on my channel... Well, today, the sister of a cow-orker gave me her toaster to look at, telling me that it wasn't heating.

So I had to burr into the plastic a little in order to get my bit down to the screws. Rather than using a regular screw, it was one of those six pointed star with the lug in the middle jobbies. It's annoying that manufacturers do this, especially given as how it isn't hard to obtain the appropriate widget to undo such screws, so even the "security through obscurity" fails.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. The first thing I did was look down inside.

If my toaster looked like this, I'd be too ashamed to let anybody see it.

Am I a joke to you? was literally (not figuratively, actually literally) the first thing that came to mind. This is vile. Who in their right mind would choose to put a poor unassuming piece of bread into something as revolting as this?

So I whipped the top off and tested the heater element. It was reading 2.43 megaohms. In other words, I was expecting maybe 20 or 30 (ish) and instead got 2,430,000. As it happens, that reading was the electronics on the circuit board, the theory tested by disconnecting the heater and probing across the board. ☺

Megaohms? Not Good.

It didn't take long to find one of the heater elements that slide right out of the glass/ceramic tube. You can see the problem.

Fault located.

Since the break was right at the end, I pulled off the short length of broken heater and patched the rest of the heater to the supply wire. It's a bodge, but it works.

There's life in this piece of junk yet.

I then sent a text message to my cow-orker saying I patched it, it works, but the thing is ancient and the wires are worn and and it could break again at any time. Indeed I'm not entirely sure it'll survive the car journeys (in mine, then in hers). The metal is so brittle.
I also said it was dangerous - both in terms of security and hygiene, and really this thing should be taken to the recycling point and could she please tell her sister to buy a new toaster.

Let there be heat!

For legal reasons, covering my arse, I printed out that message and taped it to the outside of the toaster. It worked on my table as I was enjoying the sun outside. I ran the toasting cycle several times, it worked as I would have expected. I don't expect the thing to burst into flames, though I suspect there are several crispy spiders inside it now. I'd be more worried about contamination than flames. But, whatever, my official advice is "just don't" and I hope my message conveys that.

Really sweatheart, take note of the message and dump this thing.

I've just finished the washing machine and a strip-wash with a lot of arm and hand rubbing because the connecting wires were wrapped in fibreglass that flaked apart. Ugh, I really don't want to go to bed with any of that crap on me.

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A tree-dwelling mammal, 4th May 2025, 21:31

"Would anybody like any toast?"    #reddwarf    (If you know, you know!)

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