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Posted by nick on January 30, 2009, 10:18 am
The last three electric ranges I have owned (all with the usual
"infinitely variable" surface unit control) have occasionally just
shut off on the lowest setting. Normally this setting will maintain a
simmer, but when the control decides to screw up, it will let the
temperature of the pot drop to 180 degrees or even lower. I have just
assumed that there is no solution to this problem, but it is very
annoying, and maybe somebody out there has an answer. The old style
burner/control with two or more coils hooked in series or parallel at
110 or 220 was a lot more predictable. I guess I don't understand why
we can't devise a better control.
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Posted by dpb on January 30, 2009, 10:36 am
nick wrote:
...
> ... I guess I don't understand why
> we can't devise a better control.
Cost.
--
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Posted by Tony Hwang on January 30, 2009, 11:45 am
dpb wrote:
> nick wrote:
> ...
>> ... I guess I don't understand why
>> we can't devise a better control.
>
> Cost.
>
> --
>
Hmmm,
Analog vs. digital control.
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Posted by J. Clarke on January 30, 2009, 12:22 pm
dpb wrote:
> nick wrote:
> ...
>> ... I guess I don't understand why
>> we can't devise a better control.
> Cost.
How does the control sense the temperature in the pot? Most of them
are simply variable resistors or if someone is going for efficiency
triacs that vary the power input. They do no temperature sensing at
all unless there's an overtemp protective circuit.
To be usefully better the control would have to sense the temperature
in the pot. There have been attempts to do this but they generally
involve dangling a probe into the food.
--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
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Posted by nick on January 30, 2009, 1:34 pm
> dpb wrote:
> > nick wrote:
> > ...
> >> ... I guess I don't understand why
> >> we can't devise a better control.
> > Cost.
> How does the control sense the temperature in the pot? =A0Most of them
> are simply variable resistors or if someone is going for efficiency
> triacs that vary the power input. =A0They do no temperature sensing at
> all unless there's an overtemp protective circuit.
> To be usefully better the control would have to sense the temperature
> in the pot. =A0There have been attempts to do this but they generally
> involve dangling a probe into the food.
> --
> --
> --John
> to email, dial "usenet" and validate
> (was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
These controls don't sense the temperature in the pot, they just
switch current on and off controlled by some kind of bimetal device
inside the control. Ideally, on-time to off-time ratio should be
constant for any given control setting, with the ratio varying from 1
(max heat) to some fairly small fraction when you set the control on
its lowest setting, and what happens on the lowest setting is that
this ratio is totally undependable. Most of the time it is correct,
like maybe 1:20, but occasionally the same control setting produces a
ratio like 1:40. At the higher settings it is dependable. Clearly a
digital control which just measured a time interval directly would be
better. Maybe when the stoves come from China....
And incidentally, gas stoves have their own idiosyncrasies. They
waste a lot of heat lost to the room, they smell, they steam up the
windows in winter, and they are often slower to boil water than an
electric stove. They do mostly hold a setting, but that setting can
be difficult to achieve. The problem I am complaining about is not
caused by the energy source, it is just bad engineering.
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> we can't devise a better control.