"William Gothberg" wrote in message
news
On Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:38:04 -0000, Clare Snyder
wrote:

On Sat, 29 Dec 2018 08:07:42 -0800, Bob F wrote:

On 12/29/2018 6:37 AM, trader_4 wrote:
On Saturday, December 29, 2018 at 9:23:42 AM UTC-5, Bill Gill wrote:
On 12/29/2018 7:43 AM, William Gothberg wrote:
Shouldn't we have faster microwaves by now giving out a few kW? They
were invented decades ago.
Higher powered microwaves would require higher powered electric
outlets, probably 220VAC (in the USA).

Also it is questionable whether higher powered ovens would be
practical for use. Getting warming times down to a couple of
seconds might not be a good idea. More speed is not always better.

Bill

+1

That about covers it. Not sure how useful more power would be. For
example,
last night I was thawing out a tomato sauce in a quart plastic
container.
The Panasonic has a defrost mode that uses about 30% power and cycles
that.


It gets the 30% power by cycling the 100% power on 30% of the time.

(By the way, adjusting the level does not actually change the wattage.
It simply means the microwave will pulse on and off at its fixed wattage
until the desired level is reached.)

https://lifehacker.com/5974788/famil...-cooking-a-joy
That was true of the first generation of Microwaves, but the current
"inverter" driver units actually CAN throttle the power. Inverter
microwaves are much better for defrosting AND cooking.

We've had ours for about 2 years now - replacing our original that we
bought in about 1985.

BIG difference (but the old one would likely still be working by the
time this one dies)

Why is it called an invertor?

Because that's how it works.

I thought an invertor was a device to increase the voltage - like running
240V devices off a 12V car battery.

As usual, you are so stupid that you havent even noticed
that most words have more than one meaning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven

In most ovens, the magnetron is driven by a linear transformer
which can only feasibly be switched completely on or off. (One
variant of the GE Spacemaker had two taps on the transformer
primary, for high and low power modes.) Usually choice of
power level doesn't affect intensity of the microwave radiation;
instead, the magnetron is cycled on and off every few seconds,
thus altering the large scale duty cycle. Newer models use inverter
power supplies that use pulse-width modulation to provide
effectively continuous heating at reduced power settings, so that
foods are heated more evenly at a given power level and can be
heated more quickly without being damaged by uneven heating.

And why on earth would you not want to cook on full power? I've never had
a reason to lower the power from the maximum of 800W. I want the meal as
soon as possible!

Yeah, you know it all, no microwave designer knows anything.