On Sunday, June 12, 2016 at 11:57:55 AM UTC-4, net cop wrote:
Pat Dixon writes:

How long can kitchen garbage disposals things run dry?
Are they ALWAYS supposed to have water every second they're running?

They are neither cooled nor lubricated by water.

Several web sites do mention cooling as a reason to run cold water. Others disagree. I'd always been told cooling was part of the reason, so I dunno..

It does seem likely to me that a disposal has a light duty motor. If something is typically run for 15 - 30 seconds at a time, would you engineer it so that it can run continuously? I'm sure it can take 3 minutes or so but I'd be reluctant to let it run much longer without cooling off.