EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Electronics => Beginners => Topic started by: Boris_yo on October 07, 2012, 11:53:18 am
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Hello and here are appliances which have rockers I question about:
(http://i.imgur.com/BLMC8l.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/BLMC8.jpg)
Old coffee maker and recently malfunctioned electric kettle. Can their rockers be proven to be useful later on? For example I have aquarium lighting that does not have On/Off switch and with one of the above potential rocker I thought of correcting this. Regards to electric kettles in general, I think somebody mentioned on this forum about them having delicate rockers, so I don't know if such rockers are safe to use, let alone worth keeping at all.
Additionally, is there something else to take off of appliances before I trash them?
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on electronic kettles they generally have something like a bimetalic strip balanced inside of them, so that when it reaches temperature it will flick itself off, on some this also acts as a spring and can be a bugger to remove, i would say avoid if possible,
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The blender one can be reused, but the kettle one is just a plastic moulding that operates an arm that goes down to the base by the power inlet, where it pushes in a pin on the element, which contains the actual switch inside. You will find a bimetal strip by the handle that is operated by the steam when the water boils, and this provides the push to switch the kettle off when it boils. It is a small u shaped spring on the one side, it serves both as sensor and spring for the switch.
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I usually keep the power cords, always useful to have some at hand. The switch from the coffee maker is usable, but they tend to be cheap and nasty. Don't use them to switch on stuff that has a huge inrush current.
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Affirmative! But should I also keep kettle's charging stand just in case my another kettle's stand malfunction? Of course I realize this is not universal stand which will fit all kettles however.
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Disassembled lower part of electric kettle today picture of which you can see on at the bottom of this post. The rocker is integrated and thus cannot be used with wire joined from each side because it's mainly big, fragile and doesn't have its own casing. Maybe I could do something with it though... but I prefer buying small and lighter rocker:
Electric Kettle's Rocker (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9pC2JZ8qzk#ws)
Additionally I wanted to disassemble 15 year old coffee maker but could not find appropriate screwdriver and screwbit for this type of screw:
(http://i.imgur.com/zuMDGl.jpg)
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Security screw, you can buy a bit set to open them ( cheap 101 bit set for hex driver set normally has 4 different size ones) or brute force it out with either a sacrificial screwdriver where you file a slot in the head or use a small blade one to turn only half the head.
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Additionally I wanted to disassemble 15 year old coffee maker but could not find appropriate screwdriver and screwbit for this type of screw:
Spanner bit.
As SeanB mentioned, you can usually find these as part of a security bit set, and Chinese made sets can be had inexpensively.