My Kenwood Microwave (Kenwood in badge only) has expired....

[KingboyD]

My Kenwood CJAL28 microwave is about 1 year and 9 months old, cost about £90 when new, last week I was heating some milk for my morning ready brek when it let go with a bang and a trip of the ring main breaker!

Had a word at Curry`s but got the usual and TBH expected "its not our policy to help you after 12 months of ownership" speech.

So - today I thought I would try and establish whats happened to it, removed cover.......

Nothing obvious really, closer inspection of the bottom of the display housing revealed some small black debris, stripped the display panned and found this.....

Which was caused by this.....

There you can see 2 tracks of the PCB blown off as if there had been a dead short somewhere! the pins that have blown are the N and the bulb feed sure enough on closer inspection I found this...

Yep, thats right folks, it does indeed appear that a £3 bulb has seen off my lovely shiny microwave oven It must have gone to dead short as it blew! No fused protection for the bulb circuit what so ever = blown PCB.

Not happy, anyone know if I can get a replacement PCB?? I do realise the microwave is most likely bin fodder now but I can but try

 

[Gees]

Circuit boards can be repaired but not sure of the rules and regs regarding this these days. When I was in the tv repair business it was common practice to simply link the board where the tracks had blown. Done carefully it worked a treat.. But do take further advice..

 

[Sleepyhead]

Board repair still goes on.
If it was mine, I'd repair the board with link wires and insert a fusible link into the light circuit.
However, £90 microwave a year and a half ago is probably now around £39. Fusible link would probably cost around £10 to £15. Bulb at another £3. Halfway to a new one in Asda or Tesco.
Kenwood is only a badge name nowadays.

 

[KingboyD]

Board repair still goes on and it went on today!

Pillaged some link wires from an old VCR and did this....

Works a treat now

 

[Gees]

Thats EXACLY how it should look..

 

[breezer]

one query.

we know the lamp went causing the pcb track to blow.
we know that in our opinion there should have been a fuse

but if / when the lamp fails again, what will blow? it can be the same place because they can now carry more current, so i wonder what will blow.

 

[KingboyD]

Thats EXACLY how it should look..

Yep, I was quite pleased with my repair

one query.

we know the lamp went causing the pcb track to blow.
we know that in our opinion there should have been a fuse

but if / when the lamp fails again, what will blow? it can be the same place because they can now carry more current, so i wonder what will blow.

I know mate, thats why I have yet to install another bulb until I can find some sort of fuse to go inline with it and the PCB