Even when I was in Manila, my sisters have been telling me that our Panasonic microwave oven (with inverter technology) is on the blink. The past one, two years that we've had the microwave oven, we don't even use it for cooking, merely to reheat leftovers. Hard to believe it's junk now. Anyway, they tell me that every time they use it, there's a fizzing sound. They see a few sparks, the oven gives off some bad smell, and trips the circuit breakers. Thinking it's probably some moisture trapped in the enclosure, I gave it a good cleaning, and it worked perfectly.....for a few weeks. Today, the symptoms came back, and we definitely have a problem.
With nothing to lose, I took the whole thing apart. Every thing looks all right with no burnt component in sight. Zeroing in on the source of the bad smell, I took a closer look at the transformer coils. I see one very thin copper wire sticking out, so I thought, oh this must the one giving the shorts. It looks too thin to be a wire, so I looked deeper. Guess what? Deep within the transformer enclosure is a burnt cockroach. Obviously dead, its body is nevertheless still conductive which shorts the coils every time the oven is activated. Now I know how Grace Murray Hopper felt when she found the bug in ENIAC. After disposing of the cockroach remains by shaking it out, the microwave is back in tiptop condition.
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