PeterD wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jan 2011 20:35:49 -0500, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

mike wrote:
My 27 year old microwave oven was down below 400W output and taking a long
time to heat my coffee.
So, I went out and bought a 1100W one.
Big mistake.
It works fine on coffee, but WAY overcooks small stuff.
Yes, it has a power level setting, but the on-time is 15 seconds
and they modulate the off-time.
I tried to heat a frozen hamburger patty. It boils the liquid around
the outside for 15 seconds, but the inside is still frozen.
This really messes up the cheese stuck to it. If I leave it in
the frozen burger, it comes out awful.

What are my options for reducing power?
Yes, I can stick in a pot of water to absorb energy, but I'm
looking for a more elegant solution.
I assume there's nothing I can do on the primary side, cause of the
filament voltage requirements.
Assuming I can find a switch that can take the voltage and current,
can I switch the value of the big cap? Not much else in there to play with.

Alternatively, there's stuff they put in the bottom of microwave popcorn
that heats up from microwaves. What is that stuff? Maybe I can find a
pan with that in the bottom to average out the energy over time.
There's a "as seen on TV" serving plate that you heat in the microwave.
It's made of granite. What is it in the granite that gets heated?
IF I could find a square of floor tile in ceramic or granite, ceramic is
more easily available, I could stick one of them in the bottom of the oven.

Suggestions?

RTFM to see how to set the cook power.

Or use the defrost cycle!

When I ask a question on line, I go to great lengths to describe the issue
in detail to keep the discussion from running off in all directions.
It rarely works, but I keep hoping that people will actually read the
info before shooting from the hip.

With this, and every other low-end non-inverter microwave oven I've ever
encountered, the power is adjusted by pulsing the magnetron in bursts
of approximately 15 seconds followed by an off-time required to get the
average power you programmed.
The RELEVANT number is the 15 second MINIMUM on-time. Doesn't matter
what buttons you push, you can't get an on-time less than 15 seconds unless
you program a single burst that's shorter.
If 15 seconds is long enough to boil the liquid in part of the payload,
defrosting can make a mess of things.

In this case, the "defrost" button has some algorithm that they don't
disclose
and I've been too lazy to reverse-engineer, but the minimum on-time
is still about 15 seconds.
It's a fundamental property of the design.