Tips on Repairing Your Microwave Oven

Okay, my microwave oven wasn't microwaving. I had seen this before in a number of ovens and the problem was rarely due to some internal flaw with the transducer or the electronics. It was almost always due to the interlock switches.

These are switches that are closed when the door is shut. The one that usually goes bad is the one that is attached to the door opener. This switch gets a lot of action. Each and every time the door is opened or closed..this switch gets used. And the way some people slam these doors around is a shame.

And interlock is a safety device. It will automatically render the appliance inoperative unless certain conditions are met. In the case of this microwave oven, the door must be closed or it will not operate. It is not a good idea to have a lot of microwaves roaming about the kitchen, this can cause things to happen that you do not want to happen.

Lets take a look at how microwaves aid us in heating and cooking. A microwaves is nothing more than a high frequency radio signal. It just so happens that the frequency at which the oven operates, causes some interesting things happen to matter. To be more specific, a microwave oven at a sufficient degree of power, can boil water. And a large proportion of the foods we eat contain a great deal of water. So if you heat the water using microwaves, you also heat the food. Or even cook it.

There is an alternative view of microwaves and cooking. There is a view that the microwaves simply cause agitation of the molecular structure of the food in general. This creates friction between the molecules and friction will cause heat and thus we are able to heat and cook using microwaves.

On my rather used microwave in the kitchen I determined that I needed to remove the outer casing in order to get to the switches and thus determine exactly which one was malfunctioning.

With the outer casing removed I could see that there were two switches that I needed to examine. The first one was the door opener switch. The door worked fine. The latch opened and closed exactly as it should. But the switch attached to the door may not be making it's internal connection and this would render the oven inoperable. Using an ohm meter I was quickly able to check both switches and sure enough the door opener switch was not making it's internal connection and needed to be replaced.

I knew enough about electronics that I could bypass this switch and make the oven work regardless. But this would place anyone else using the oven at some risk. By bypassing the switch, I was taking a chance that someone could operate the oven even with the door open. And there was also the problem of bypassing the other switch as well. Both have to be closed for the oven to work.

I ordered the correct switch directly from the parts provider online and when it arrived I installed it and the oven worked as it should.

One thing about consumer electronics. There comes a point where it is wiser to replace the appliance than repair it. Parts are not known to be cheap. In fact it has long been a suspicion of mine that manufacturers make a good percentage of their profits from selling parts. Parts they know good and well will fail after a given amount of use. It is interesting that they always have a good supply of these parts on hand.

This particular switch had cost the better portion of sixty dollars. I could have gone and purchased a new oven for under one hundred dollars. It would have been smaller, had less wattage and fewer features. To replace this oven exactly, would have amounted to over two hundred dollars. So for me, this was a wise choice to fix instead of replace.

But suppose I had sent it in to a repair shop? That sixty dollar part would have exploded to sixty dollars plus mark up and we have not yet reached the labor costs of replacing the switch. A conservative estimate would be perhaps forty dollars for the hour of labor time. So sixty dollars for the switch plus some percentage mark up and forty dollars for labor and we are now over one hundred dollars. Still not bad considering the cost of replacing the oven.

I replaced the outer casing on the oven and gave it a test drive using a bag of popcorn. It tasted wonderful.