In many small appliance problems, a controller is the culprit. So, before you begin tearing your toaster or vacuum apart, let's see how small appliance controls work -- and what to do when they don't. Switches Most small appliance switches are activated by hand to control the flow of cu...
Recently I built aSMD reflow ovenusing a toaster oven and acontroller kit. This has made it really easy to solder up SMD PCBs (surface mount device printed circuit boards). You simply put blobs of solder paste on the pads, drop the SMD parts into place, put in the reflow oven and bake...
and even brand new records have a residue left over from the pressing factory. You want none of this stuff touching your turntable’s stylus (needle). There are a number of ways to clean a record, some of them totally automated and using sophisticated ultrasonic devices such as thetoaster-l...
Fuses and circuit breakers are safety devices built into your electrical system. If there were no fuses or circuit breakers and you operated too many appliances on a single circuit, the cable carrying the power for that circuit would get extremely hot, short circuit, and possibly start a fire....
Moving back to the bottom of the lamp, cut the cord a few inches away from the base. (Scary, I know! But we’ll get this bad boy working in no time.) And pull the wires apart: Using a wire stripper, strip the ends of each wire: Now you’re going to solder the ends of these...
amps initially but will quickly settle down to around 4 amps. Suppose the refrigerator is plugged into a 20-amp branch circuit and a 1,000-watt electric toaster (which draws a little more than 8 amps) is also plugged into that circuit. If the refrigerator motor starts while the toaster ...