Buyer Beware

In the last three months we've had 3 units (Toastmaster 6431 Eclipse Single Burner). In all cases the units were never abused, never dropped. They were used twice a day for short periods. Our electrical outlets are wired properly and the unit was never wet. Its polarized plug was plugged in correctly.

The first unit died after about 2 weeks, i.e. no heat. With the second unit after a month or so I felt charge on our metal tea kettle, if I touched any metallic part. My voltmeter showed the full AC wall voltage, 110 VAC, across the chassis to ground when the temperature control was in most, but not all, positions.

The third unit, brand new, out of the box, has 35 VAC from chassis to ground. I can feel a slight tingle. I expect the unit to get worse if used. I bet the problem is a bad batch of rheostats or whatever the temperature controller is. And I bet that any appropriate insulation degrades with use from the heat.

The unit does not have the common third wire, to ground, which is so common with any AC device in a metal chassis, to prevent shock by throwing the circuit breaker if there is an internal short. It does have a polarized plug. It is NOT UL approved.

In my experience, THIS IS A DANGEROUS UNIT. Our local hardware store has removed its remaining units from their shelves. I'm going to eat the cost and disassemble the unit to try and determine what the problem really is. And I'm going to write the company that something bad is going on here, maybe a bad batch of parts ??

I've had Toastmaster stuff before and have been satisfied. In fact, we just bought another, different, UL approved unit, from the same company, for the same price, the Buffet Range TTS1. We hope this unit works and has been properly manufactured to be safe.

Buyer Beware!

[Saturday, October 04, 2008]

a great single burner

I use this with a pressure cooker, regularly crank it all the way to 6, and it's still giving great service after several months of regular use. Beats hands down the coil type electric eyes.

[Saturday, September 22, 2007]

possible repairs

I have one of these and it worked fine for about a year. It was a little slow but then what do you expect for 1344 watts (what it says on the bottom)? It seemed faster than a 750 watt hot plate I have, so I was satisfied.

Then it quit completely after about a year of frequent use (I got rid of my stove and now do all my cooking on various plug in appliances).

I thought it was kaput. I opened it up and didn't see a fuse, so I thought the heating element had gone out. Then I read this and found others had the same problem, and somebody wrote that there is a fuse, so I looked again, and sure enough: one wire in there has a sort of slip on tube over part of it, and if you disconnect that wire and slip off the tube there it is.

It says on it SEFUSE and I didn't know what that was (I don't know anything about electricity) and so I looked it up on the blessed internet and it's a thermal fuse. So I replaced that whole wire and now the hot plate works fine.

But, I must say, I think it's a bit DANGEROUS to use it this way. If something goes wrong electrically then the circut breaker in my house will take care of it. But what if it just plain gets too hot and begins to self-destruct or catches on fire? That's what that fuse was there to protect against. It probably isn't too dangerous since it's only turned on and plugged in when I'm there, cooking, and it would probably start to smoke before anything really bad happened. The temperature control is itself a kind of circuit breaker, shutting off the current at a certain temperature and then turning it on again when it cools down a little. But I guess the fuse was a backup in case that fails.

What I'm wondering is, does anybody know if there is some kind of thermal circuit breaker that could be inserted in that circuit? That wouldn't be too hard to do and then it could be reset when it went off.

The fuse says on it:

SEFUSE
SF 240E
240 C
10A
ET 250V
0445

There is a degree mark between the 240 and the C so I guess that means it goes off at 240 degrees Celsius which, (according to my conversion widget) is 464 Farenheit. That's hot, but how hot is that really? Didn't I read somewhere that cooking temperature (like in a frying pan) can get up to 600 degrees or so? I may be wrong about that.

Anyway, does anybody know of a resettable circuit breaker that could be inserted in that circuit? Thanks.

As far as product review goes, though, should all this be necessary in an under $30 appliance? The answer, of course, is no, so I'm lowering my rating. I must admit, though, that I didn't contact Toastmaster to see if they would replace it. I assumed they wouldn't since it's been more than a year, but who knows. The purpose of the non-resettable fuse, of course, is to get you to buy a new one, which I would never do: 1 star.

[Thursday, August 02, 2007]

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