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Comment by midnightclubbed | Hacker News Reader

Tempting fate here but I don’t see any reason why my cheapo spring loaded toaster won’t give me another 10 years of life. There’s nothing to go wrong if used correctly.

Back when I was a kid in the 80s toasters would break because we shoved in hacked up pieces of bread or bagels where the food touched the elements and caught fire. And knives were poked inside to extract burnt remains from the heating elements.

I was shocked to see there are toasters with motorized lifting mechanisms. Is there any practical reason why this is better than a spring?

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Actually toasters need to be able to switch off a huge current, which causes arcing. This arcing may slowly burn the PCB and desolder the metal contact mounted on the PCB. At least that's what happened with my last toaster after >5 years. Repaired it once, then after a year it broke again, but this time the PCB through hole was severely burned and it wasn't trivially fixable anymore.

Motorized mechanisms... hmm. Well, sometimes toasters pop up toasts too hard making them land on the floor.

> switch off a huge current, which causes arcing

This isn't really true. The heating elements are pretty much entirely a resistive load, which do not cause arcing when switched off. What desoldered your PCB might be the heat itself.

There was visible arcing every time the toaster popped up the toasts though. Now that you mention it, I'm kinda curious what exactly was causing it. (Too late of course.) It's not the first toaster I've seen that produced a flash of light every time it was done though.

Here's a pic BTW: https://imgur.com/tZadj6N

There’s no need for a PCB in a toaster.

The nice thing about AC is that 120 times a second there is no current. Shutting off at that point is as easy as using a thyristor.

> there any practical reason why this is better than a spring?

Depends what you mean by “practical”. Motorised avoid the jump scare and don’t risk launching light pieces out of the toaster.

I’d also assume (but don’t know as I’ve never been much of a toaster person) they can have a longer movement range and limit crumbing through lower acceleration stress.

> Is there any practical reason why this is better than a spring?

People are propagandized to pay more money for them, then do it again when they break.

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