Special Edition :D

Ever so often... I get to dissect some electrical appliances... Muahaha... for today's special edition... The appliance to go was an electric iron.

The causes of death unknown. But before death it showed symtoms of critically high fever that resulted in fumes or smokes rising out of its forehead. It is assumed to be caused by bad insulation of wires that resulted in overheating and melting of the insulation. However, as this experiment was not to indentify the causes of its death, there will not be further reports on the findings related to its death.

The aim of this dissection was to study the internal structure of an iron, and to attempt to retrieve its core to build an electro magnet.

Here's an overview of the iron structure.



To my dissappointment, there was no iron coil to be retrieved. I had assumed it to have a coil similar to that on an hair dryer. But it only has one loop of wire around the plate. The wire was assumed to be iron as it can be attracted by an magnet. There goes my electro magnet... haiz....
But nevermind, lets carry on investigating :)

One can't help but notice a familiar brand... NEC



On the other side of this component it shows.



This is the best angle I can get with my camera. Anyway. from the second picture. We can see that it writes 220'C Therefore I came to a conclusion that this is a thermistor :) And its a general thermistor for the whole circuit. As the iron can be set to different temperature, the fact that this is not a variable thermistor would mean that there's another variable thermistor controlling the temperature. So this should be the overall thermistor that controls the whole iron incase the variable thermistor is faulty.

On thing surprising is... I didn't know NEC produces thermistors as well... haha... Thought they were some computer chips company...

Lets continue... so if that weren't the variable thermistor, then which is it? After some investigation I found the mechanism ：）





Notice the difference? The middle bob actually move up and down when you turn the knob (out of the picture) on top. So thats it :D Its a thermostat :D The knob on top is used to adjust the distance between the adjacent plates. This is what controlls the different temperature of the iron :D

Isn't it cool to learn, discover and apply what you learn this way :D haha.... So yar :D Must read my blog more often... not only u can hear me talk crap... but also can learn some stuffs as well :P haha... my blog very educational de :P lol.... k lar... me talking crap again... thats all for this special edition :D Hope you people learn some things :) bye~