I have a microwave oven that I got at the local dump. Someone had thrown it away because it didn't work any more, the only thing wrong was the fuse inside was blown. It is a really nice one, with lots of bells and whistles, including a cooking sensor.

If I put a potato in it, and press the "Potato" button, it cooks the potato perfectly. If I put in two potatos, or four potatos, or however many, it cooks them all perfectly. Yes, it has a sensor, but how does it know how many potatos are being cooked, and how does it know when they are done?

Just what is that sensor... ummm... sensing? How does it work?

tanstaafl.

Wow, that's a good one. I would guess there is a little strain gage scale built into the turntable. It measures weight and you input the item so it knows water content.

Maybe, though I believe our microwave's auto cooking function does it by monitoring the amount of steam being given off by the food that is cooking, at least that is what the manual says it does.

I don't know about the microwave, but the title of the thread reminded me of an alternate ending to this joke.

I have a Sharp microwave that has lots of "Sense N cook" buttons on it for perfectly cooking a variety of different foodstuff.

I've never used any of them. I wonter if I should read the manual. Although after 10 years I may have trouble finding it

thats funny, I just took my 4 year old Stainless Steel, over the range , GE microwave to the dump. I didn't throw it away though, I boxed it up proper, manual and all and left it in the "leave stuff, take stuff" section. It had crazy functions like a scheduler, you could leave voice memos on it, and a slew of other features I never came close to using. Anything more than a popcorn button, as thats about all I use them for, is complete overkill imho.

The turntable went out on it at first, no big deal, just turn that off EVERY time you use it. Then a few months later the magnetron went on it. It was still under warrantee, but I had to pay the labor. It would have cost me more to fix it under warrantee that to go and buy a brand new one. After some quick research it turns out that GE is notoriously bad for prematurely failing magnetron's, so I reluctantly, decided to cut my loses.

It disgusts me, that in this day and age, our economy has become so disposable. Glad to hear your problem was simply a fuse.

go china! ftw!

Yeah, the magnetron went out in a three year old microwave I once had. Then again, my roommates were pretty bad about putting metal containers in there...

I always like to salvage old microwave ovens for their magnetron transformers. They usually put out between 2 and 4 thousand volts at 200-400 mA and can be put in series for good power supplies for jacobs ladders and tesla coils.

Stu

My understanding is that it simply has a moisture sensor in it that detects the amount of water in the air inside the microwave, much like sensor clothes dryers.

What my photo doesn't really capture well, is the scale of this machine. It is absolutely massive. Those glass discs are each, like, maybe 4-5 feet in diameter, and perhaps an inch or so thick.

Cheers!