What can you make from an old microwave oven?

Low-power oven for heating food

Proceed strictly according to the scheme:

1. Remove unnecessary parts from the housing. To do this, remove the back panel, having previously discharged the high-voltage capacitor using a well-insulated high-resistance conductor. Twist the transformer, magnetron and turntable motor. All this will be useful in the manufacture of other useful products. Be sure to remove the glass disc and its drive from the camera.
2. Go to the market, to an electrical parts store, or find an online market of the appropriate profile. You will need an air heating element up to 1 kW. Install the unit at the bottom of the device. The heating element requires reliable fixation, so before installation, take care to install the metal guides. The heater must be positioned so that the connected part is completely removed from the chamber.

1. Connect the heater to the wires that come from the microwave oven's electrical filter.
2. Place grates or a baking tray of a suitable size inside the chamber, leaving 3-4 centimeters from the heater.
3. When connecting the product to a 200V network, use high-quality wires with a high-temperature insulating layer.

So in just a couple of hours you can turn broken equipment into a fully functional device with which you can easily heat up food, prepare hot sandwiches or defrost semi-finished products. To cook in an “oven”, you need to include a thermostat in the electrical circuit, and equip the door with special tempered glass, which in turn is taken from an old oven. In such a homemade oven you can already cook any dishes, including meat and baked goods, at temperatures up to 200 °C.

Low-power oven

If your microwave or microwave oven with mechanical control is broken and you are not going to repair it, then you can make an ordinary low-power oven out of it. To do this, the electric motor that rotates the platform is dismantled and a heating element or a burner from an electric stove is installed.

Remember that before dismantling, the microwave oven capacitor must be discharged by shorting it to the housing, because it can retain a high voltage charge for a long time.

It remains to consider the issue of installing guides for the baking sheet, installing a regulator for modes and replacing the glass with a more heat-resistant one . The new product will not be able to bake pies: the door and many parts are not designed for prolonged exposure to high temperatures, but it will perform the heating function perfectly, working as an oven in a solo format.

Vintage bread box

Don't want to fuss with electrical parts? Use your creative imagination and transform the unsightly body of an old microwave oven (MVP) into an original antique bread box. Your manipulations with tools will be limited only to dismantling the internal parts. It is necessary to dismantle not only the parts, the turntable with the motor, but also the power cord. Next, carry out the following work (one or all at once):

1. Paint the body with paint of your choice. We have already written about how and with what to paint a microwave.
2. Decorate the outside walls with stickers or decorate them using the Decoupage technique using napkins with vintage patterns.

1. Add an LED strip to the camera - regular, blue, green, red or RGB, and activate it in the dark. In this case, you should leave the power cord, and you will have to install a step-down transistor inside the case to power the backlight.

As a result, depending on your efforts, you will end up with a bread box - either simply unusual or with the function of a lamp.

Magnetron

The magnetron contains a very important central core, which can be removed from the mechanism and scrapped. The magnetron consists of the following elements:

• cathode;
• heater current leads;
• anode block;
• volumetric resonators;
• output communication loop;
• coaxial cable;
• magnets.

The magnetron is responsible for the microwaves that a microwave oven produces to heat food. For the same purposes, you can use the device to warm up components in other devices. The main thing is that the magnets are in full working order, as is the structure itself. Test the condition of the magnetron before use, because often the microwave stops working precisely because of it.

Parts from old and unusable equipment will definitely be needed for new independent inventions. Do-it-yourself appliances are excellent helpers in the home and everyday life. Don’t rush to throw away your old microwave oven and other devices, because the parts from them can really come in handy.

Carefully and carefully disassemble the frame of the microwave oven, choosing the most important elements for yourself. Review them for suitability and implement your main technological ideas. Remember to follow safety rules and be careful. Do not operate with the microwave on. Come up with new uses for old parts and give your equipment a second life!

Put electrical components into use

If you made a bread box or an oven, you still have a mountain of unused components. Working spare parts can be put up for sale on Avito or other trading platforms. And give the rest a second life if desired.

1. Fan. Use it for a homemade freezer or incubator. Having beautifully designed the fan, you can install it indoors.

1. from a transformer , including welding machines and chargers.

1. Turntable electric motor . It will be useful in a homemade incubator for the purpose of automatically turning eggs. To adjust the time intervals between procedures, you need to build a time relay into the electrical circuit. Also, together with the glass disk, the engine turns into a decorative stand or an unusual lighting fixture in a garden or summer cottage.

1. The capacitor, control module and other radio components are excellent “toys” for radio amateurs, who, at their discretion, turn them into intricate, sometimes unnecessary, but very interesting products.

Important! When using MVP parts, be careful: they may contain dangerous components.

What to make from an old microwave?

Today it is easier to buy a new household appliance than to repair an old one. But in the case of a microwave oven, it’s a pity to throw away a nice case, especially considering that half of the “filling” remains intact. We suggest you figure out how to use a broken microwave oven for other purposes - for benefit or for the soul.

Important! When working with electrical devices and their parts, follow safety precautions and properly insulate the wiring.

Let's find out what you can make from a microwave with your own hands.

Low-power oven for heating food

Proceed strictly according to the scheme:

1. Remove unnecessary parts from the housing. To do this, remove the back panel, having previously discharged the high-voltage capacitor using a well-insulated high-resistance conductor. Twist the transformer, magnetron and turntable motor. All this will be useful in the manufacture of other useful products. Be sure to remove the glass disc and its drive from the camera.
2. Go to the market, to an electrical parts store, or find an online market of the appropriate profile. You will need an air heating element up to 1 kW. Install the unit at the bottom of the device. The heating element requires reliable fixation, so before installation, take care to install the metal guides. The heater must be positioned so that the connected part is completely removed from the chamber.

1. Connect the heater to the wires that come from the microwave oven's electrical filter.
2. Place grates or a baking tray of a suitable size inside the chamber, leaving 3-4 centimeters from the heater.
3. When connecting the product to a 200V network, use high-quality wires with a high-temperature insulating layer.

So in just a couple of hours you can turn broken equipment into a fully functional device with which you can easily heat up food, prepare hot sandwiches or defrost semi-finished products.

To cook in an “oven”, you need to include a thermostat in the electrical circuit, and equip the door with special tempered glass, which in turn is taken from an old oven.

In such a homemade oven you can already cook any dishes, including meat and baked goods, at temperatures up to 200 °C.

Vintage bread box

Don't want to fuss with electrical parts? Use your creative imagination and transform the unsightly body of an old microwave oven (MVP) into an original antique bread box.

Your manipulations with tools will be limited only to dismantling the internal parts. It is necessary to dismantle not only the parts, the turntable with the motor, but also the power cord.

Next, carry out the following work (one or all at once):

1. Paint the body with paint of your choice. We have already written about how and with what to paint a microwave.
2. Decorate the outside walls with stickers or decorate them using the Decoupage technique using napkins with vintage patterns.

1. Add an LED strip to the camera - regular, blue, green, red or RGB, and activate it in the dark. In this case, you should leave the power cord, and you will have to install a step-down transistor inside the case to power the backlight.

As a result, depending on your efforts, you will end up with a bread box - either simply unusual or with the function of a lamp.

Put electrical components into use

If you made a bread box or an oven, you still have a mountain of unused components. Working spare parts can be put up for sale on Avito or other trading platforms. And give the rest a second life if desired.

1. Fan. Use it for a homemade freezer or incubator. Having beautifully designed the fan, you can install it indoors.

1. from a transformer , including welding machines and chargers.

1. Turntable electric motor . It will be useful in a homemade incubator for the purpose of automatically turning eggs. To adjust the time intervals between procedures, you need to build a time relay into the electrical circuit. Also, together with the glass disk, the engine turns into a decorative stand or an unusual lighting fixture in a garden or summer cottage.

1. The capacitor, control module and other radio components are excellent “toys” for radio amateurs, who, at their discretion, turn them into intricate, sometimes unnecessary, but very interesting products.

Important! When using MVP parts, be careful: they may contain dangerous components.

Tips from the web

The former trend of going to forums for advice has become obsolete. Nowadays, few people are nostalgic for these nice conversations in cozy “online rooms,” and advice is drawn from social networks or information sites.

After reading a couple of such conversations, we found both banal and creative advice on re-equipping the profit center. The winner was the advice - to make a house for cats out of the microwave casing.

The author of the post advises first to correlate the device with the size of the cat, and then remove the door if necessary.

Important! Don't put your cat in a microwave, even if it's not working. We are for respectful and decent treatment of animals.

Source: https://270076.ru/svch/cto-sdelat-iz-staroj-mikrovolnovki/

Diagnosis of faults and causes of their occurrence

Replacing a magnetron can require quite significant financial costs, so before buying a new device, you need to diagnose the old one to make sure that it is really faulty. The test can be done at home using a regular tester. To do this you will need:

1. Disconnect the microwave from the electrical outlet.
2. Remove the protective cover and conduct a visual inspection of the part.
3. “Ring” the main elements of the printed circuit board using a tester or “multimeter”.
4. Inspect the thermostat.

At the end of the diagnostics, conclusions can be drawn about the malfunction of certain parts. The main reasons for magnetron failure include the following:

• Vacuum tube cap is faulty. You can replace it yourself by simply selecting a similar cap from another magnetron. The seats of such caps have a standard configuration.
• Heater breakage. If you turn on an empty microwave or load it incorrectly, the magnetron will overheat, which can lead to excessive heating of the filament and its breakage. To diagnose it, it is necessary to measure the resistance between the legs of the capacitor. If its value is within 5-7 Ohms, then the heater is working.
• Breakdown of the feed-through capacitor. If the tester does not show an “infinite” resistance value between its contacts, then the capacitor must be replaced.

When using household appliances at home, we rarely think about what amazing devices and power are inside the devices we are used to. It’s another matter if the equipment becomes unusable and, in the hope of salvation, we begin to study the Internet and available circuits. If you are interested in the possibilities, you can find information about how a microwave gun is made from a microwave oven on YouTube. A very entertaining but formidable weapon with many useful functions. For example, with its help, beetles are perfectly exterminated.