New electric hob - should it smoke? Or have I broken it?

[JPCoetzee]

I fitted a new Indesit electric hob (7kW, same as old one). I turned all 4 hotplates up to max together to check that everything worked. There were no pans on the hotplates. The stainless steel hob surround got very hot (too hot to touch) and some smoke came off the tops of the plates and wisps of smoke from vents on the bottom of the hob. This went on for about 10 minutes. The smoke does not smell electrical (you know what I mean) and the electrical contacts still all look good.

Is this normal? Or have I broken it? I only found out afterwards that you're not supposed to turn electric hob rings on without pans on them

 

[LearningSpark]

This is quite normal and should dissappear quite quickly. When the parts are made they will have oil residue etc on them which will burn off during first use. The manual usually states this.

 

[securespark]

What does the manual say about switching on the first time?

In the absence of the manual, I would ring the mfr.