6 ms·

I can contribute another simple example of a kitchen appliance that didn't necessarily get smarter: the cooking plate! Remember the good old cookers with rotary

by rob74 5y ago

I can contribute another simple example of a kitchen appliance that didn't necessarily get smarter: the cooking plate! Remember the good old cookers with rotary switches? Those actually had up to seven different stages of heating (see schematic here http://www.herd.josefscholz.de/7Takt/img16.gif http://www.herd.josefscholz.de/7Takt/img16.gif)! While the new digital ones are... digital - i.e. they switch the plate on and off repeatedly to produce different amounts of heat, but that depends on the pot/pan/whatever you put on it to store the heat while the plate is off. So a definite step backward if you ask me...

bmicraft 5y ago
At least from my experience my induction stove does not seem to have this problem, which kinda makes sense if you think about it: It already has to switch on/off many times per second to induce current, so it can just skip some cycles. I suppose as induction slowly wins over resistive heating this will become a non issue once again.
- ericbarrett 5y ago
  I really loved my induction range and miss it, having moved back to gas. It could bring an 8 quart pot of water to a rolling boil in two minutes flat.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
Not to mention the digital ones are more prone to failure.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  Are they? Is this studied? I have never heard of one failing and know many people with them.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    by cooking plate I mean the cooking plates in the normally sold induction stovetop, in those of course the failure is generally not on the cooking plate but the stovetop itself but that doesn't matter, once the stovetop goes you can't use a plate because it's all one big integrated appliance. So anyway I bought a slightly above medium priced one a few years ago, and it has failed about 5 times. When we had the guy out to fix it he said that it was a common problem that the part where you have to push to start a particular plate cooking can fail to register a push anymore and as a general rule if one of the 'buttons' couldn't be pushed none of them could be pushed because after all they aren't really buttons. I asked why is it continually failing he said oh sometimes there is some underlying electrical issue, but I think we have everything fixed now. Anyway after the fifth breakdown in a couple years it has been going pretty good for a year now. Now of course since an induction stovetop is one big piece, there are fewer parts that can fail. So maybe there actually is a higher failure on analog stoves, but I remember every time I had a failure on my analog stoves it was only one piece that failed, and sometimes it was easy to make it work again, like a broken knob, or it was only a partial failure like that cooking plate doesn't get as hot as it used to. When my current stovetop fails, it is all failed. A case in point I bought a small portable two cooking plate analog stove at the same time I bought the more modern induction one. One of the cooking plates got broken some years back but the other still works. We also need it to make espresso as the pot is too light to register on the induction stovetop. on edit: must be tired, changed in case of point to a case in point.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    The controllers fail all of the time. Many of them don’t fare well around high heat, and sometimes the capacitive panels delaminate or otherwise fail. Replacement is usually expensive. The failure point of analog controls was usually the trivially replaceable knob. Appliance makers do a ton of reliability engineering to deliver predictable failure rates. Barring atypical screwups and bad design, major appliances tend to fall off a cliff about a year after the expiry of their extended warranty (usually 4-6 years)
    - Aloha 5y ago
      We had a trade off, we mostly traded labor for parts cost, the labor to change parts is now basically trivial, but the parts are 3-4x more.
Gigachad 5y ago
The digital touch screen ones won because they are so much easier to clean. A current model induction stove is a completely flat sheet of glass. You spray some chemical on it and give it a wipe down and its done. No pulling knobs off, working between gaps, etc. And on the switching behavior, I believe that is more related to just how induction cooking works rather than the way you control it. The values on the control panel are not exact anyway, you are always going to have to get a feel for how they work for your setup. I moved from a house with an induction stove to a classic gas stove and its an absolute nightmare. Cooks slower and takes 50x the effort to clean.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  To be fair, they do have gas stoves with inductive touch panels now. Only thing to clean are the grills themselves.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    The knobs are part of it but the actual grill bits are by far the worst. I don't understand why gas stoves are so popular when you have to pull them to bits and scrub down after every use if you don't want them looking like crap. While induction is faster and takes a 20 second spray and wipe.
    - AussieWog93 5y ago
      >I don't understand why gas stoves are so popular when you have to pull them to bits and scrub down after every use if you don't want them looking like crap. Because that literally isn't a concern for almost everyone who has one? I clean mine once a week.
      - sgtnoodle 5y ago
        Gas stoves can put out significantly more power than electric, and achieve high temperatures much more rapidly. It's very convenient compared to electric.
howLongHowLong 5y ago
Isn't it much more efficient to use pwm than resistors to adjust energy in that fashion?

by rob74 5y ago

bmicraft 5y ago

At least from my experience my induction stove does not seem to have this problem, which kinda makes sense if you think about it: It already has to switch on/off many times per second to induce current, so it can just skip some cycles. I suppose as induction slowly wins over resistive heating this will become a non issue once again.

ericbarrett 5y ago
I really loved my induction range and miss it, having moved back to gas. It could bring an 8 quart pot of water to a rolling boil in two minutes flat.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

Not to mention the digital ones are more prone to failure.

Gigachad 5y ago
Are they? Is this studied? I have never heard of one failing and know many people with them.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  by cooking plate I mean the cooking plates in the normally sold induction stovetop, in those of course the failure is generally not on the cooking plate but the stovetop itself but that doesn't matter, once the stovetop goes you can't use a plate because it's all one big integrated appliance. So anyway I bought a slightly above medium priced one a few years ago, and it has failed about 5 times. When we had the guy out to fix it he said that it was a common problem that the part where you have to push to start a particular plate cooking can fail to register a push anymore and as a general rule if one of the 'buttons' couldn't be pushed none of them could be pushed because after all they aren't really buttons. I asked why is it continually failing he said oh sometimes there is some underlying electrical issue, but I think we have everything fixed now. Anyway after the fifth breakdown in a couple years it has been going pretty good for a year now. Now of course since an induction stovetop is one big piece, there are fewer parts that can fail. So maybe there actually is a higher failure on analog stoves, but I remember every time I had a failure on my analog stoves it was only one piece that failed, and sometimes it was easy to make it work again, like a broken knob, or it was only a partial failure like that cooking plate doesn't get as hot as it used to. When my current stovetop fails, it is all failed. A case in point I bought a small portable two cooking plate analog stove at the same time I bought the more modern induction one. One of the cooking plates got broken some years back but the other still works. We also need it to make espresso as the pot is too light to register on the induction stovetop. on edit: must be tired, changed in case of point to a case in point.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  The controllers fail all of the time. Many of them don’t fare well around high heat, and sometimes the capacitive panels delaminate or otherwise fail. Replacement is usually expensive. The failure point of analog controls was usually the trivially replaceable knob. Appliance makers do a ton of reliability engineering to deliver predictable failure rates. Barring atypical screwups and bad design, major appliances tend to fall off a cliff about a year after the expiry of their extended warranty (usually 4-6 years)
  - Aloha 5y ago
    We had a trade off, we mostly traded labor for parts cost, the labor to change parts is now basically trivial, but the parts are 3-4x more.

Gigachad 5y ago

The digital touch screen ones won because they are so much easier to clean. A current model induction stove is a completely flat sheet of glass. You spray some chemical on it and give it a wipe down and its done. No pulling knobs off, working between gaps, etc. And on the switching behavior, I believe that is more related to just how induction cooking works rather than the way you control it. The values on the control panel are not exact anyway, you are always going to have to get a feel for how they work for your setup. I moved from a house with an induction stove to a classic gas stove and its an absolute nightmare. Cooks slower and takes 50x the effort to clean.

AussieWog93 5y ago
To be fair, they do have gas stoves with inductive touch panels now. Only thing to clean are the grills themselves.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  The knobs are part of it but the actual grill bits are by far the worst. I don't understand why gas stoves are so popular when you have to pull them to bits and scrub down after every use if you don't want them looking like crap. While induction is faster and takes a 20 second spray and wipe.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    >I don't understand why gas stoves are so popular when you have to pull them to bits and scrub down after every use if you don't want them looking like crap. Because that literally isn't a concern for almost everyone who has one? I clean mine once a week.
    - sgtnoodle 5y ago
      Gas stoves can put out significantly more power than electric, and achieve high temperatures much more rapidly. It's very convenient compared to electric.

howLongHowLong 5y ago

Isn't it much more efficient to use pwm than resistors to adjust energy in that fashion?