An Old Microwave And What To Do With It - An Electromagnet And A Phone Charger

[Music] hi sir it was only yesterday that I was talking about that generator that I found no that's a really lucky farm that's not something you're gonna see every day but this morning I was drivin to work at rough pass place this had been thrown on a bit of park land actually there's a bit of a shame and it's a bit of a sign of our times but it was on a nice bit of grassland that didn't belong to anybody clearly somebody just chopped it out because they couldn't get the big man to take it but it's a fairly common thing that you come across a broken microwave it's something lots of people have it's something you find often well yeah inverted commas so what I thought I'd do is a video on some things that you can do with this because it's a broken microwave it's not likely that you're gonna be able to repair it certainly not by yourself and you don't have to repair everything I mean the first choice has got to be repaired but it's not always possible to repair stuff but even when you can't repair it there's always a great deal of stuff in here that you can reuse and repurpose for any things I mean if you're gonna dispose of something like this and you would in theory want to recycle in an ethical way I suppose but and even that you know that the world is so fraught a lot of this stuff ends up in an electronic consumer waste and really weird places you wouldn't believe it would end up in but we can take this apart and get some really useful bits and pieces out of this and then do some stuff with it so that's what I thought I would do I thought I'd take this apart have a look at the inside pull up the bits and pieces that I think we can use and then do a couple of projects reusing those bits and pieces so that's what I'm gonna do now microwaves one of those things everyone is scared about there's a big notice on the back saying warning microwave energy do not remove this cover on see some plug do there is no microwave energy and this has been lying on the grass for a day so that chances are is absolutely nothing in here but seeing insects and some leaves but if you worried about store charge wear some rubber gloves try not to touch the contacts that kind of thing if you don't wear rubber gloves like I'm not going to and you get a bit of a shock Welsh if you got yourself to blame Evan yeah but let's take this apart there very often these things are put together with an specialist to stop you taking it apart the little set like that and I drop that from the local store for a few pounds has most of the things in there that you're going to want to need to get some of these specialist screws off okay first things first des electronic components right that and we can see that's the magnetron I have seen people use those for external magnetrons actually chemical there's a little ring bell there for the timer here's the control board that's the oven transformer there's the high voltage capacitor right there there's a fan just there is a shaded pole fan looks like a power supply right there there's a whole lot of really useful gear in here this incidentally it is a thermal cutout switch of temperature it's too hard that actually cuts it out so that's worth saving is another one right there in case the magnetron do not so just pull these bits out because we don't quite know what we're going to be using now sometimes there's a lamp sometimes they are a bit stiff like that one and what that means is it's got a little connector in there holding it in and if you give that a press at the end you'll find that it comes free so there's kind of a cool lamp and lamp all but I'm not sure what voltage that is hmm 12 volts [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] little hoard of stuff get out there the main case was actually just steal and that's gone to the recycling recycling is all about separation actually now I've separated that into steel and plastic and put the steel in one bin and plastic in the other the actual recyclers the guys who turn this into new steel they're gonna have a easy job with it the stuff that's problematic is this kind of stuff where you've got an awful lot of electronic waste going into things the thing about this particularly this kind of board which is a bit indelicate it's full of really useful bits there's a couple of power resistance right there that's a 10 amp relay there's a nice toroid here it's a separation transformer actually there's a high value electric arm polyester cap there's a couple of ceramic caps there but electrolytic property of no use but there's a ton of things you could be solder from these boards and this half-dozen components also just check them in the electronics bin and when you need one you've got something that we also got a couple of these thermal cutout switches such a very useful heating applications you're making your heating mats nice fuse I'm forever looking for a bit of flex to plug in believe it or not now separated the screws out so the ones that weren't metal to metal or self tappers I've kept them I'll put them in a jar and I need to do something again there's a whole lot of contact switches I've got three contacts which is out of that I got this shed of Pohl motor this is an induction motor incidentally if it works by the AC current setting of an induction field in the rotor here this very thick copper winding here makes this side lag in time and so the thing will spin now they're incredibly cheap motors they have a terrible efficiency in a very low starting torque so shaded pole motors are often found in fan applications which is what this one is but that bobbin there is a really fine copper wire that unrolls beautifully and can be reused really easily have you put a saw cut in here you'll find the bobbin in the center pin will drop out and you can make a solenoid out of that no problem at all or just reuse the copper so very useful things those at once you take them to pieces the thing I pulled out the bottom was this so that's an asynchronous induction motor this is a synchronous motor and this is one of the things we're going to take apart even further and have a look at this and we're going to do something with one of these two that count of call we're going to whole set of high voltage stuff so we've got a very nice microwave oven transformer we can use for welding this I collect these high voltage diodes and these high-voltage capacitors because I use them for blowing of water basically you come behind voltage charge and you could make graphene out of this I've been collecting these a while to replicate what I think it was rice did on exploding graphite into graphene so I need a few of these I've got three at the moment once I got half a dozen of these or so I can replicate that experiment because to buy what they're used to cost a hundred pounds each and I need six of them six hundred pounds on capacitors or I can just take my time and collect them from microwave ovens till I've got enough and then I can replicate that graphene experiment so I'm saving those for the graphene experiment but look at some of the electronics this is the magnetron incidentally it's another bit that we're gonna take apart because we see you right there there's a couple of awesome ring magnets sitting in the middle of the magnetron so we could have oh and this this is just the wiring loom but I tend to save those for all the connectors and all the bits of wire because you're forever wanting little bits of wire and you end up paying a fortune for connectors and wire that you don't even think you're paying for absence a whole host of really useful materials we've done the separation for the actual recycling so there's much cheaper to recycle it in which greener and we've got some useful things and I'm going to break down this and this and then do something with it okay so I've chosen three bits and we're gonna do three projects with them this one we're gonna make an electromagnet out of it this one we're gonna make a cell phone charger this one but they're probably gonna make a homopolar generator stroke motor unlikely to do that one as a separate video on the members channel cuz see it's already getting a bit long in a couple of protests it's great and that will be on the members Channel I think so let's get on and make an electromagnet okay so if you have a look at the microwave oven transformer is made and actually two components there's a long strip looks like an eye and then there's a big block here that when it's not wrapped looks like an either as an e aí transformer there when they wound this what they did was put a weld across here they put a weld hit all of them together and a weld here to hold the e in the eye together and it's the same on here and it doesn't go all the way through it's just going at the top there so we have to do is remove that weld now there's a couple of ways of doing that one way would be just with a hacksaw take a hacksaw source through the world saw through that weld and that e will just come off nice and clean another way to do it is an angle grinder so I haven't have an angle grinder so I'm going to grind that weld until we can get that e out of there and like I say you can use a hacksaw it'd be a bit careful not to damage any of this stuff but basically take an angle grinder to it or a hacksaw we end up with a bunch of these which is the eye shape and then that which is the east shape and that's what's going to be our electromagnet now we obviously want one of those coils and the coal that we're going to use is this thick one here so we don't care too much about that thin one all of this is rammed in and glued in pretty tight and we need to get that out without damaging it as much as possible the easiest way is got a bit of advice there swap that in there and we're going to damage the bottom coil sure good we're going to use that as a cushion to prevent those damaging the top pile you're on some bit of metal stick it on to the center of the E and just persuade that out Perce where it means hit it with the hammer so it's all packed pretty tight in there and you will Bend this one by using it as a lever burr doesn't matter as long as that bit comes out clean that's what you're interested in preserving because that's going to be up coil so put that to one side and remove all this governs which really can be brutal as you like with it because we talked about being all done for steel and some copper wire so you can take a screwdriver whatever your favorite tool of destruction is check out what is another coil and some spacers in there so wrapped in there you'll find some little sheets of steel this is silicon steel again remember there's a another coil there and then there's a big old coil they're very fine wire you just want to get them out and however that works for you so stick a screwdriver in there whack it hard leave it out whatever you want to do to get that out I'm gonna stick a screwdriver in their own work it hard basically okay that's it there's your each shape that was on about there's a whole bunch of hi shapes right here remember they went on there like that with the primary secondary in we've saved the primary the secondary is gone all we actually have to do now is pop that back in there now you shouldn't have damaged it if anything you can test that resistance if you want I can squeeze it in and test to make sure that there's no contact between this call and that call if your bit worried about it you can realign this with the whole load the electricians tape if you want but you basically just get that coil back into that space take a little bit of fiddling but not too bad and that's your electromagnet so I'm gonna get that coil back in there and then connect it up to some power okay there it is and I've connected it obviously one plus one minus is a DC doesn't matter which way around the coil it goes it's a coil there isn't much resistance in that coil so if you put the book voltage up high it will eat those amps it gets pretty hot sprit e quickly if you're running them a very high voltage but it'll start giving you a magnetic effect around about five volts or so so at 5 volts it is drawing an amp but we are getting quite a good electromagnet out of that that's kind of cool isn't it still a pretty strong oh yeah that is a really strong electromagnet anyway that was a bit of fun and certainly something to do with bits of scrap microwave I think I'll put that to one side I have seen a video where a guy did and three of these in a row and used it for a holding mechanism for a CNC lathe so that basic principle of making electromagnet out you could work with that and do quite a few exciting things I'm sure but anyway how to make an electromagnet the next thing I want to look at is this thing this is the synchronous motor that used to turn the plate now these things are 240 volts well this one is 240 volts 16:56 Hertz and it turns around about four or five rotations per minute so if I give that turn by hand it's pretty tough but put a bit of leverage on it then I can get that to turn which is really cool so let me connect that up to a meter says he wondering where his meter is [Applause] and it is going to be AC okay so we need an AC voltage reading [Music] oh I'm just twiddling it gently like that as you can see on AC I'm getting about 30 40 volts so first things first let's have a look what's inside here okay there were four retaining pins right there which I've been back with the pair of pliers that should help me just get that cover off actually there we go an in there obviously we've got a bunch of reduction gears there we go and then there's an internal cover plate there but there is the a nice little magnet okay so it's the rotation of that magnet which was generating or equally on the other side of things it was the AC feel field applied to here with that if I can get that out we should be able to have a look see what the coils like there we go up comes out really quite easily a gun little shell and here is the coil itself right there and it's got a little connection pins there so that's quite a fine wire and when you unwind this is a bit like when we looked at the shedded pole motor actually that's a very fine copper and it unwinds beautiful in can be used to something else but we're going to use it as a little hand crank generator it so for this I've got one of those synchronous motors that we had a look at and that's the other one from the microwaves it took out earlier and I've kept the turntable bit because that was lots on there rather nicely and we're going to attach a handle for the handle I've got a piece of bar that I took a little printer and this had these little rubber grommets on so just slip the rubber grommets so that it will hold it onto there and stop it moving backwards and forwards and I've got to fix it on with something there and to do that I'm going to with it I'm gonna whip it up in a while he's been a stranger to tape you could glue it on whatever I'm going to whip it like that nice bit of black plastic to hold everything together I've been a diode bridge here that I meant previously it's made out of four one two one end for double or sevens yeah one in for double or sevens and I did a video on how to act make the diode bridge but it really is a piece of cake you put the two clips together solder it to our nodes together and you've been left with two tails an anode and a cathode and you sold at the anode and cathode together and you'll end up with a little count shape like this the AC goes in between the anode and the cathode and the DC out comes out whether both the cathodes are and both the anodes are cathodes being positive anode being negative dead easy to make a rectifier bridge so med rectifier bridge the only other thing you've got is this thing this is a USB charger that I got from the local supermarket for something like 2 or 3 pounds I think and in there what I'm expecting is a circuit that will make that voltage nice and even and give you an output at 5 volts in 2.4 AMS's somewhere around about there so I'm going to crack that open drill that out mount everything and that's what I'm going to do so first things first let's drill [Music] [Music] [Music] you're superb at electronics that we just pulled out there's the USB it's obviously positive and negative here which will be the same as the USB output incidentally there's the positive in there's a negative in and you can see the various bits of electronics on there that's amazing for everything I really did pay about two pounds for that so we're basically going to glue that on there and then why our rectifier bridge in between connect it up to that and we're ready to go okay so there it is finished on there really nice bit of black plastic and that's the back of it I guess we could put a nice container surround on that and there's the USB output we put a nice back on it of course you could make it really pretty I've put the handle on it there we go and one thing we do know is it's generating at least enough to light that LED which is kind of cool actually okay I've got my phone here no I I'm worse than useless as my phone if I try to turn that on me and forever letting it go out of charge I suppose it's because I just don't use the phone that much but we're gonna try and put some charge on that phone and see if this actually works it's a phone charger which is what it's supposed to be obviously unbelievable unbelievabl started I am not sure how long you'd have to do that but there we got a phone charger from an old microwave anyway I hope you've enjoyed the video and thank you very much for watching

Channel: Robert Murray-Smith

Views: 650,848

Keywords: microwave oven, electromagnet, magnetron, phone charger, fwg, robert, diy, d-i-y, home, made, built, microwave, oven, phone, charger, murray-smith, science, fair, project, design, technology

Id: rozz-wbHfYM

Length: 21min 50sec (1310 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 17 2020