definitely a blown light bulb can’t kill a microwave oven, right? You may not expect it to, however that was undoubtedly the root cause of a issue that [mikeselecticstuff] just recently investigated; the cascade of failures is instructive to state the least.
While the microwave that made its method to [mike]’s bench wasn’t precisely engineered to fail, it definitely was not created to succeed. We won’t spoil the surprise, however suffice it to state that his really hopes for a quick repair work after the owner reported a bang before it died were dashed by an arc across the interior light bulb that put a pulse of mains voltage in locations it didn’t belong. That the cascade of failures killed the appliance is a testament to exactly how creating to a cost point limits exactly how thoroughly gadgets can be checked before production runs in the millions are stuffed into containers for trips to overseas markets.
Even though [mike] made his finest effort to abide by the repair work Manifesto, the end result was a scrapped microwave. It wasn’t a overall loss provided the fascinating parts inside, however a frustration nevertheless unless it forces us to keep in mind edge-case failure modes in our designs.
[via r/electronics]