Thursday, January 16, 2020

Attempting to fix a 30 year old Wind-up musical carousel @Redwood City Public Library Fixit Clinic

On December 14, 2019, a Fixit Clinic was hosted in the Redwood City public library. Starting at 12:00 PM and ending at 3:00 PM, the session saw a variety of items being brought in to be fixed, from a wonky clock to a dead space heater. I attended this event and experienced the early Christmas spirit associated with attempting to fix items.



Fixit@Home - Rice cooker and the Thermal fuse

My mom has a large but basic rice cooker that has knob which flips between a “warm” and “cook” setting. Recently, however, it stopped working, so it had to be fixed. Of course, I took that responsibility. To start, I took apart the cooker by unscrewing a metal plate underneath it to expose its internals. Inside the cooker was a relay to the mains, a switch connected to the knob and wires connecting to heating elements. The first thing I had to do was test out whether electricity was flowing into the system, so I plugged the cooker in and used a multimeter to check.