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Modern toasters are bullshit. This is what you want. https://www.theverge.com/22801890/sunbeam-radiant-control-toaster-t20-t35-vista
Modern? I'm pretty sure this one is older than me and I turned 41 the day before yesterday 😄
That being said, the sunbeam looks brilliant and if I could afford one I'd much prefer that to the one I have!
Just make friends with someone who has one!
(Then steal it)
Well, if it is just the knob you can try gluing it back, cut up toothpicks might help. If you are confident with electrics you can replace the potentiometer.
Toasters just really go by time or temperature, except the Sunbeam which actually goes by if the toast is 'toast'.
I never let anything die, I just keep fixing it. Hardly an auspicious start though.
After some swearing and trial and error, it turned out that putting it back on was actually quite easy without having to use any glue or anything, making it fulfill the "mildly" part of the community name lol.
Thanks for all the helpful advice nonetheless though, I really appreciate it 🙂
Swearing and impact technology are greatly underrated techniques for appliance repair.
Nice! I like "impact technology" almost as much as "concussive calibration" 😂
We also used percussive maintenance
Not true, I had a Philips toastsensor that apparently sensed the toast.
It was good only to burn said toast. That toaster is now in the garbage and has been replaced by a regular one. Good riddance!
Didn't Technology Connections make a few videos about it?
Edit: ah they're linked
Holy fuck, why didn't this catch on?
The article mentions that they costed about 22 USD when introduced and it's around 260 in today's dollars. Pretty darn expensive
That's actually better than I expected, but yeah, I'm guessing that was the issue.
Now, a pressure sensor and microcontroller would be pennies at scale, and most toasters already use solenoids. I'm less sure about the temperature sensor because of how much heat it would have to tolerate, but I doubt it would be more than a few dollars, and manufacturing a slightly different board would be a one-time cost.
This would make a pretty good startup. The YouTube videos have done some of the marketing already, even.
I think some of the fondness for devices like these also comes from the subjective beauty/elegance of mechanical stuff over the modern microcontroller approach with electronics. But yeah, it still would be very interesting to see stuff like this available again at a cheaper price
I get that too, but this is a concept that's actually relevant (in toast-making terms) outside of any academic or aesthetic considerations. It's just better.
Indeed, no disagreement there! By the way, Technology Connections (the YouTube channel referred in the article) has a video on how an old microwave is miles ahead its modern counterparts. You might like that, too
My guess is that the profit margin wasn't big enough 😮💨
Hmm, I guess it might have been pretty complex for 40's manufacturers. Hopefully someone gives it another try.
I have a kitchenaid toaster that matches my KitchenAid...I hate it , it manages to burn one edge on either side of every slice of every bread. It beeps before it makes a loud pop to so the beep is annoying and superfluous. It's first setting is warm bread and second is just passed acceptable, 3 is burnt. I've never used the remaining 4 -6 settings. If you put bread in at 2 and then another batch when it is done it will burn the second lot.
Utter piece of shit for the price we paid. You'd get, and in fact I have, a better toaster for a tenth the price doing your grocery shopping.
These days, any purchase you make is a gamble without research. And even with research, it's hard to tell the difference between a reviewed version and the one you're looking at sometimes.
Or something with a knob for heath control, to counter the aging bimetal.