Some years ago, I purchased a Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster at a salvage store. Lately, it stopped automatically accepting and toasting the bread. I found, through trial and error, that it would accept and toast the bread if I tilted it over toward me at about a 45-degree angle. That helped for a few weeks until it finally stopped working completely.
I decided to take it apart and possibly replace the heater contacts. After many years of use, they must be kaput, I thought. When opening it, I tried to keep from bending anything until I found out how it was intended to work. It clearly had a very crafty mechanical logic system that sensed the presence of bread, starting the thermal motor to lower the bread while starting the heaters. The contacts were still in perfect operating condition. When it “sensed” that the bread was properly toasted, it would shut off and lift the toast.
I found that the return springs that lifted the toast had weakened a bit, so the bread presence sensing switch couldn’t trigger the starting cycle. I figured a light tweak of the spring bracket should cure that problem. However, there was no bracket to tweak, only a punched hole in the inaccessible frame. How else could I fix it? Shorten the spring? This wasn’t going to be easy.
Digging further into the mechanism, I found an adjustment screw that increased the lifting spring power. Not only that, but that adjustment screw was accessible from the bottom, without taking the toaster apart -- just open the crumb tray, and there it was. The engineer should have added instructions on how to make the adjustment -- it would have saved a lot of time and effort.
This entry was submitted by Robert Nepper and edited by Rob Spiegel.
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Good point on the screwdrivers near electrical products, Kenish. Products are much more disposable these days. Not sure that correlates with outsourcing. It may. Most of us don't expect appliances to last as long these days. The whole concept of service repair is gone. Part of the reason, I believe, is that electrical and electronic products are too inexpensive to warrant the labor costs to repair.
As a Quality/Reliability Engineer at Milwaukee's Sunbeam/Oster back in the late 60s, I'm well aware of how appliances were designed and made in comparison to today's products.
That adjustment screw served a dual purpose. It was initially used on the production line to adjust it's functionality in a new condition, and positioned to enable user adjustments as it ages. We used to monitor all products using SPC charts, created in pre-calculator days using only a slide-rule and hand drawn charts. I still have and use a kitchen full of those appliances, all still working after 45 years of use. Those were the days when products were built to last.
My guess is that the adjustment screw was not intended to be used for maintenance, but rather to compensate for production tolerances. Sheetmetal stampings are not always as precise as needed and so that was the alternative. It could be set during production and the calibration adjusted as each run of stampings was used. Just a daily or hourly check would be needed to find the current calibration setting. Even "back then" it was not always good to let all appliance users know where the adjustments were, because some folks twiddle without any understanding of what they are doing.
As for using Google to find service information, my luck has been poor. Usually I find lots of folks who want to sell me something that may or not be what I asked about, and half a dozen organizations that claim to have the item for sale when they don't. Plus some manufacturers even refuse to admit that they ever made the product. Sometimes it is clear why, such as a Kenwood brand amplifier that failed due to poor solder connections. That one will appear on Sherlock Ohms one day.
I have a Sanyo toaster oven from the early 80's that is still going strong. It's a vertical format with 2 shelves instead of slots and takes up very little counter space. It was made in Japan when they built stuff like a brick privvy and before they followed our lead and outsourced consumer goods manufacturing. Now that I bragged, it will probably go up in flames next week!!
The lack of information on the tension adjustment screw is understandable. Engineers will figure it out...instructions will encourage everyone else to stick screwdrives into live electrical appliances.
Good that you quoted the relevant text. "Trigger" tells me that it failed to *start* the process when not held at 45 deg. Definition of trigger has the embedded meaning that this is needed to kick the process in motion, so once triggered it will run its due course without needing a continuous input, in other words: put the bread in, tilt to 45 deg until the switch triggers the toasting cycle and place the toaster back on the counter during the toasting.... Probably the OP can confirm if this is the correct conclusion from the words he chose to describe the 45 deg trick.
OLD_CURMUDGEON made an excellent point--landfills? What landfills? They didn't really exist in the 50s and 60s: things lasted longer and people got them fixed instead of tossing them out.
cvandewater, the article says "accept and toast the bread if I tilted it over toward me at about a 45-degree angle." That says accept and toast, not accept and then place at a different angle for toasting. Besides, in a normal toaster, the toast is held toward the bottom of the slot during toasting, presumably to keep it in contact with that sensor, and released when done, which release presumably also removes it from touching that sensor so the unit will turn its heat off (or connects to some other sensor that does so). In fact, the article clearly states "the return springs that lifted the toast had weakened a bit, so the bread presence sensing switch couldn't trigger the starting cycle."
The simple fact is that those appliances WERE manufactured to be adjusted & repaired. I had an aunt who was married in 1922. One of their wedding presents was a TOASTMASTER "Deluxe" bread toaster. This toaster lasted & lasted until one day in the 1970s, someone tried to remove a slice of rye toast which had become lodged in the slot. Removing the power, the person proceeded to use a standard butter knife to assist the removal. Lo & behold, the filament on the MICA support sheet got snagged and broke. My cousin brought the toaster to an appliance repair store.
Guess what???? The counterperson looked up the (1922) toaster, and said to him, "we'll have a new heater assembly for you in about a week!" Not bad for a FIFTY year old kitchen appliance!
Although my aunt (& uncle) & cousin are now deceased, I'd be willing to bet that the toaster is STILL working in the family's house, just as it has for the better part of a century!
This IS one reason why there wasn't a great demand for landfills in earler ages in the U.S.
The new age (lazy) problem solver, in absence of a manual, would do a GOOGLE search for the manual. This was the link to show up at the top of the Google search; http://www.automaticbeyondbelief.org/fixing.htm This link tells all about the malfunction descibed in this thread and the adjustment dial.
When your lab is only one scope, one meter, and one homebrew function generator and power supply, the scope is stage center. But this one wasn't working right.
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