Cydrome Leader wrote in
:

William Sommerwerck wrote:
Some of the older US made units from Litton or Tappan had
a giant reed relay, and the HV was actually switched on and
off for the defrost mode. They made a nice sound switching
on and off.

I'm curious as to how my GE works.

If, at 50% (say) you were full "on" for one minute, then off for one
minute, you'd be running in that first minute at a power level that
would cause localized boiling. (This is a problem with soups and
oatmeal.)

I do not see that. Therefore, I have (???) to assume that PWM with a
cycle of less than one second is used.

No,it's longer than that. probably a minimum of ~10 seconds.
you can tell by the change in sound of the oven,the magnetron loads more
when it's cooking.

1 second seems pretty excessive. I don't recall what the timing cycle
on the Tappan ones were, but it was less than a minute for sure, but
not every few seconds.



I really liked those older machines. They were easy to use. I still
don't get why a microwave oven needs multiple buttons pressed to heat
food. It used to just be, turn the timing knob and press start. That's
it.

Maybe it's cheaper to use a digital timer than a mechanical timer.
Although ISTR seeing some low-end MW ovens that still had the mech.timer.

But people want the flexibility of using their MW for more than simple
reheating/cooking tasks. My GE has all sorts of functions I never
use,mostly sensor cooking.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com