Amana RadarRange: Ate It's Own Stirring Device?

That's really odd. Maybe something collected there over the years where the metal met plastic that absorbed microwaves rather than reflecting them then finally was enough to start arcing? Might have started out very small and once the plastic burned enough it made more contaminants that caused more arcing and so forth.

Per Meat Plow:

A vicious cycle... I like it.

But it begs a question that popped up as soon as I saw the paddle: are some metals ok tb within a microwave oven?

I'm guessing the metal paddles are alu.

That's my guess.

Yeh I've seen stirring devices before. Some metal (don't suppose what kind matters) can be tolerated as long as there is enough material in the oven to absorb most of the energy. Not sure because I haven't torn one apart but I've always assumed there was a bit of foil inside the cooking side of a microwave popcorn bag to reflect the heat towards the popcorn.

Not metal, necessarily, but a partially conductive material that gets hot when energized by the microwaves. Sort of like carbonized paper.

H. R. Hofmann

Where you run into trouble is when two pieces of metal are too close together, especially if they have sharp corners. A potential develops between them and it arcs. Isolated pieces of metal are generally ok, so long as they're not too big.

Pull the cover off the front panel and see if the blower motor is OK. The stir fan is powered by the air from the blower.

I would say that the magnetron is just fine, since it evidently is still producing microwaves.

You could leave the stirrer out and keep using the oven, but the food would get heated unevenly. Alternatively, if you can clean or cut off all the black carbon-looking burnt parts of the plastic on the stirrer, then you should be able to put it back in without problems. The black carbonised areas would get hot and lead to further burning if you don't remove them.

I can't think of a good reason why this problem would have occurred in the first place, unless you had too little quantity of coffee in the cup, or dirt was building up on the stirrer.

I think you have little to lose by continuing to use the oven, provided the door fits well and it is not leaking microwaves.

Chris

Hi!

I'm not sure you can even wear these out, for the most part. :-) Well, those and Litton ovens.

My guess is that some gunk built up on it and finally resulted in its getting "microwaved". You might be able to clean it up and use what's left without further incident. Left alone for long enough, this might prove fatal to the magnetron, but I think you've caught it in time and could still fix it.

There have been some other comments on metal in microwave ovens, and how certain arrangements or types can cause problems. I have a Sanyo microwave oven from the 1980s that came with a large metal (wire bars) shelf to allow the use of two plates in the oven at once. It works well and has never shown any sign of arcing.

William