T

October 1984.. I was born in 1984, so I felt compelled to give this old girl a second chance at life. As for the danger warning, I have no concerns as I feel completely qualified.

Magnetron with the added air duct around it. The empty voids in the case will all be filled with the waterglass perlite ceramic insulation, except for this duct area.

The blower fan, salvaged from a future shop dumpster. I believe it would have functioned in a furnace originally.

This picture shows the beefed up wave guide covering. As mentioned earlier, I hope this will add some level of protection from the wave guide being damaged or deformed. At the kind of temperatures I plan to reach with this machine, there are real possibilities of the original wave guide being completely destroyed, and in the event of such a malfunction, this added layer of metal will hopefully help to contain potentially harmful RF leakage. Obviously the dimensions of the added shielding don't match the actual wave guide within it, but that's alright. It's function is of safety and is not meant to propagate the signal in the event the actual wave guide fails in a catastrophic way. It will also act as a barrier to keep the insulation mixture from seeping into the waveguide during construction.

Almost all of the modern microwaves have wave guides that don't stretch beyond 4 or 5 inches long. This microwave has the magnetron located at the side of the machine like the modern ones do, but then it guides the microwaves down the side, across the bottom, and out the center of the cooking chamber. I really have no idea if this will be a benefit or a hindrance, but I seem to think it will make it less likely that the magnetron tip will get burnt up or damaged, which is what seems to happen in a lot of cases when people overdrive their microwaves. I'm making sure to leave access to the magnetrons mounting screws in the event it needs to be replaced at any time.