Measuring microwave wattage

"John Larkin" a écrit dans le message de news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I was asking myself what "fourmi bruillé" could be. We have some nice Brouilly there but I couldn't think of any recipe involving ants cooked in wine.

We don't have creme bruillé, but I'm fond of the much better crème brulée.

I prefer these freshly burned, with the top cream and caramel layers still hot.

I recently got about 15 microwave ovens with different problems and was able to get most of them to work. Many had a melted door latch microswitch due to poor design of a slip-on connector, some had a broken cable to the touch-pad (a fatal problem), and a few simply had blown fuses!

I did the water test on the working units, and can confirm your calculations are correct. However, none of the ovens developed their rated power, and repeating the test minutes later gave a different result. The line voltage is extremely constant here, so it may be due to other error sources in the measurement.

One unit had a melted antenna on the magetron from operating without a proper load. This dropped the power significantly. You can sometimes remove the little window covering the waveguide and look in to see if the antenna is missing. Borrow your wife's makeup mirror if your head won't fit in the oven, and unplug the unit before doing anything.

Don't get carried away with upgrading to higher power. I though it would be neat to swap my old 450 watt unit for a 900 watt one. Unfortunately, it was too powerful and burned or exploded the food. I couldn't find a power setting that performed well on the old recipies.

So if you have used the same unit for a long time, I would recommend keeping it. If there's nothing wrong with it, the power output will probably not change for decades. I have 4 units made in the 1980's that are still running fine.

Mike Monett

I don't think there is anything very linear about the transition from partial power to full power related to mains voltage. About as linear as a zener knee if you get my drift.

In general, modern magnetrons do not fail gracefully as yours would seem to indicate. They sometimes fail short circuit internally, or more commonly where the feed-through filter capacitors are built into the base connector assy. A blown short protector diode and line fuse is the usual result.

You may want to ponder a little more before you consign your old friend to the municipal tip. If the magnetron has developed a partial internal fault the power that is directed into it is transformed to heat instead of microwaves. This can be detected as a sort of run-away effect in the air blown through the cooling fins. The longer you run it under load, the less output you get and the hotter the exhaust air stream. Pretty easy to spot.

Common causes of low output power, not related to mains supply, can be intermittent spade connections to the magnetron base, (there are 10 to 20 amps at low voltage driving the filament) or overheating of the magnetron caused by fluff blocked cooling air intakes to the cabinet. These are usually on the bottom plate and rarely seen.

Most on this newsgroup will have some idea what a few kilovolts at half an amp will do, and the potential for a sneak attack by the doubler capacitor. It is usually permanent. Take great care.

Thanks, very useful. I'm persuaded - I'll hang on to it for now.

Bulldinky. Your English is at least as good as mine.

I think Europeans are a bit more picky about spelling and accents and stuff than we USians are. There's no real 'correct' in American grammar (as in no central authority). I think someone noted that mis-use of accents and such is considered rude in Europe, lacking in sensitivity to others' cultures. We're a lot more casual here, and seldom if ever type accents.

I did take a couple of years of French in high school, but it just didn't stick. My wife is multilingual, but then she can't fix a broken toaster.

John

"John Larkin" a écrit dans le message de news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

le

in

brulée.

I was not, and, at least, you can expect from me to not correct your english spelling since my knowledge of your language is way too poor and I surely make a lot of mistakes.

still

Yup.

A slightly more polite version of BS (ie, bullshit.) Variants include horsepucky, bullbleep, and the - possibly limited to Texas - horsefeathers.

The cool thing about English is that you can just make up words when you feel like it. I read somewhere that there are about 500,000 English words in use as compared to (very roughly) 80,000 words in French.

John

Speak for yourself, please.

Bull dookey! Webster's Unabridged. People play footloose and fancy-free with it, but only those who don't give a tinker's dam about precision.

Admittedly, there are way, way, way too many USians who don't care about pronunciation, or grammar, or syntax, or spelling, but from where I sit, that's just another indication that US is going down the same toilet that every other empire has gone since time immemorial when it went decadent, or turned over all responsibility to the insane authorities.

It's a euphemism for "bullshit" which in Spanish would be "caca de baca" or "merde du moo" or something. He's trying to be prissy. This means, trying to sugar-coat his profanity; say "I have a low opinion of your opinion, but am trying to pretend that I have classiness."

Please, mon ami, do not worry too severely about this sort of thing. Mr. Larkin, at times, expresses his opinions with some forcefulness, but I believe that at his heart, he is a good person.

I understand this and in truth, am somewhat surprised that it was a reasonably long time before I, personally, even knew that English is not your primary language. In other words, "You're doing good!"

AMEN BROTHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But most of you seem to do better than Americans these days. Probably because you were raised with a certain given structure, grammar, and syntax to your own language.

Imagine if nobody agreed on Ohm's Law. "Well, this is a few ohms, but sometimes when you apply 20 volts you get an amp, and sometimes you get a couple of amps, but it depends on what your attitude is at the time."

This is one of the most difficult things for English speakers - I err. American speakers to grasp. Admittedly, I have the advantage of having lived in a couple of Asian countries when I was a US warrior, and there are words that can have FIVE DIFFERENT MEANINGS depending on no difference but inflection. I think they're spelled differently in the native Asian language, but I was always too lazy to tackle reading and writing - essentially, if I could learn, "One more beer" and "where's the toilet", that was enough at the time. ;-P

Possibly surprisingly, I find myself to be of like mind here. If I want to communicate a particular concept, I feel (or think) that it is my own responsibility to make my expression as precise as possible. But, just as an aside here, be aware that speaking well of the French opens you to jingoistic reactions from certain French-haters amongst the NG denizens. ;-p

I find this to be the equivalent of a breath of fresh air in the morass of horrendous crap that's being passed off as English these days. Thank You. Merci, mon ami.

Most of us don't even know _how_ to type accents. This is why it's so much more important to choose our words with a certain amount of care.

Bwahaha! You're giving the nebbishes apoplexy! ;-D

Yeah. Did you see the Steve Martin bit where he talked about going to France? "Those people have a different word for _EVERYTHING!!!_ Guh- bwah-bleh-luh-bwah, myiowuah!"

résidus de taureau.

;-D

Or maybe, "connerie".

(odd, I thought one of them would be "merde". Oh, well.)

In English, "bullshit". "merde du taureau".

Idiomatically, "You have said something of no value to me, or to which I choose to give an offensive response."

I have a very low opinion of Fred's statement that his English isn't good. It's excellent.

Phbbbbbbt!

Language, like electronics, can be fun, but not if you get grim about it.

John

It's not offensive in a casual context. If my wife says "I'm fat", the appropriate response is "bullshit!"

That works for me.

John

"John Larkin" a écrit dans le message de news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

english

Sure not. My technical english might be acceptable and is almost limited to the electronics domain. But for what make you feel at ease in every days life I've serious gaps that I try to overcome with the help of my french-english e-dictionnary. One thing you can't see is the amount of brain juice needed. Just one example: bulldinky. I of course know what a bull is, have just discovered what does dinky mean, and am at guess for bulldinky. That's what I meant when saying my knowledge is way too poor. I'm also somewhat hesitant on some grammatical forms and not having the direct feedback of a face to face discussion does not help.

I don't know for other european countries. It might have been true many moons ago, but the situation has been vastly deteriorated during the 20 last years. To the point that I had a young (25-26 yo) engineer writing a design document on a product I had designed and I couldn't understand what the report was about, not even considering the "orandous grandma' tickle end spelung miss takes". This is unfortunately becoming the norm here. I might be a bit old fashioned but I can't see how someone that's so unclear with his mother language can have a clear engineering thinking. I tend to relate this to a lack of rigour or a form of sloppiness in both fields.

I don't think so. Foreigners are certainly not supposed to master the subtleties of a foreign language.

But accents exist because they add their share of information. Omitting or misusing accents then requires more efforts from the reader/listener and I tend to consider rude from native and educated french people, what I gladly accept from a foreigner or someone of a lower level education. The meaning this carries is: "Why should I bother assembling my thoughts or writing correctly for you? Just make the effort yourself, poor bastard." Of course every body make mistakes, but I do read over what I have written. I consider this important for the reader.

But english doesn't have accents. Only the imported ones, that become part of your language. So you do what you want with these. We too have imported english words and some are distorded or have our special meaning. But these are no more english words: just new french ones.

BTW, what does bulldinky really mean?

"John Larkin" a écrit dans le message de news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Oh, I see. Yours is just bigger than mine?

Embrace and extend, as Bill says. That may also be interpreted as "steal and kill."

John

Not always. Many new French words were originally English (le weekend and le drugstore come to mind).

I thought there was some officialdom that came down in France forbidding use of English words intertwined in the "French"?

I also recall some folderol in Germany requiring the use of "high" German... no slang.

...Jim Thompson

Horsehockey

Sure, because it includes yours (and everyone else's). Even if the French decided to make new words (gasp!) it would just add another to the English column too. ;-)