fyi 35KHz operating freq.
see this http://www.emiata.com/images/CU-22A.pdf

hank

"JURB6006" wrote in message
...
My Dad bought one of those years ago out of curiosity. Having been a
machinist
for all his life, he explained to me that those things use the same method
to
heat the pan as some heat treating processes in manufacturing. The problem
is
that you must use ferrous cookware, glass won't work at all, stainless
exhibits
some pretty wierd behaviour and aluminum is about as effective as the
glass
cookware. It stands on it's side proudly on the floor of one of his
closets.

His is a GE and we did fire it up one time just to see it work. I too
wonder
about other uses for the components inside. I guess anytime you need to
heat
iron or a ferrous alloy you could come up with something. This one has
numerous
safety systems, such as that it detects the presence of a pan uthat is
big
enough/u to cover the burner before it will turn on. Removal of the pan
immediately shuts the burner down. Also the surface is made out of a
special
material that must be not only an effective thermal insulator, but must
also
have an extremely low thermal mass. I say this because a GE rep told me
that a
demo in the showroom included the salesman bringing a pot of water to a
boil
and removing it and putting his hand right where the pot had been.
Apparently
there is not even enough stored heat conducted from the pot to burn you,
even
a second later or less.

We will not throw it out, it is a pretty cool piece of engineering, and
now
that Pops is retired, he might find time to take the thing apart. Being a
normal nut, I think weapons until I realize it runs on a 50 amp 220 line.
The
thirty five men it would take to carry the batteries could probably do
more
damage on their own. But I digress.

Go ahead and buy it if you are a ucompetent/u tinkerer and electrician
or
something, but I warn you, these things use VERY DANGEROUS voltages and
currents. We intend to take this one apart one day, but believe me utmost
caution will be observed. There will be no firing up of those coils
without
some very serious thought given to safety. Nobody wants to die.

At the moment, I have no idea of your skill level, I don't know you so
don't
take this wrong. If you are not proficient in working with LETHAL VOLTAGES
do
not even mess with it. By my estimation these things are about 5 times
more
dangerous than a microwave oven. Messing around in a microwave when you
don't
know what you're doing can kill you in 0.8333 heartbeats (5/6ths), not
even a
whole heartbeat. Otherwise, I am sure there is more than $30 worth of
parts in
it. The question is, who can use them ? No good for radio waves, but if
you
could modulate the output and find a way to focus the magnetism you could
do
something.

For example a magnetron could come pretty close to being considered a
MASER if
the proper output tubing/system were used. They consider that glorified
LED in
your CD player a LASER, but it's not really a laser.

Let's say you build a whizbang doodad to focus the entire output of the
magnetron of a microwave into a beam. I wonder what it would do to the
things
it hits.

At this point let me touch on the safety issue again, high voltage and
current
is NOT your only problem here. You should know about wave propagation and
things like that as well before you start firng these things up outside of
the
cabinet. Dad told me of a time when they company told them HAVE NO METAL
on you
when you go within so many feet of this thing. One real sharp guy had a
bic
lighter explode in his shirt pocket. The metal ring at the top apparently
melted into his lighter, thus breaching it.

No matter what, be careful because in this case, $30 might just buy you
enough
fun for the rest of your life.

Good luck

JURB