Frigidaire GLMV169 Microwave repair

It’s been a while since something broke, but that never lasts around here. This time our circa 2005 microwave decided to scare us. It started randomly staying on after the door was opened upon cycle completion. That was especially scary since it was hard to tell what exactly stayed on just by the noise.

Warning: Microwaves have lethal voltages inside, always unplug power when working on them. Proceed at your own risk.

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Schick Hydro 5 razor teardown

Today’s teardown subject has been waiting for its turn for a while- I picked it up at the last Design East conference in Boston in 2012. There, Microchip and Energizer were talking about low power design and using these Schick Hydro 5 power razors as an example. Hot on the heels of my repair of a Philips Sonicare toothbrush, this seems to be a good fit for a comparison. Both things do essentially the same thing- they shake, light up some LEDs and not much else.

Product unpacking

Schick Hydro 5

Schick Hydro 5

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Eagle Aspen DISTAMP-25-GX teardown in pictures

This unit was used for a few years with a very limited success until I finally got fed up and decided to peek inside. The always warm case and constant 7W power draw did not help its cause either. As one of the 2 star reviews on Amazon concluded- don’t bother buying one of these.

 

Vintage DMM- Hioki 3200-50

An ebay find made its way into the lab- an industrial quality DMM from Hioki, made in 1984! The meter has some pretty good specs as shown in this datasheet:

  • 3.5 digit (1999 count), 0.5% on DC voltage
  • 20uA DC current range with 10nA resolution
  • 1G input resistance on 200mV range
  • Drop proof to 1 meter
  • Dust sealed.
  • 500 hours battery life using 2 AA
  • Neon indicator of overvoltage Continue reading

Keithley 197 Microvolt DMM in pictures

Today’s quick visual teardown  is of an 1984 vintage Keithley 197 microvolt DMM, Despite considerable age, it’s still quite alive and kicking and very useful for measuring low currents and voltages.