Breaking Project #2: The Bread Machine

That's right.  I'm not just taking apart A bread machine.  I'm taking apart THE Bread Machine.

I got this thing from some friends, and I'm pretty sure that they said it was broken.  I didn't actually test it though...oops.  Anyway, I was excited about taking this thing apart, not only beacuse I know that there will be some good parts inside (a decent-sized motor, LEDs, a 4-digit display, and possibly a digital thermometer), but I also know that there is at least one non-electronic component that I want as well: The Dome!

Just look at that beautiful dome!  It's just begging to be turned into the head of an R2-D2-style robot.  You will definitely be seeing this thing again on a future blog post.  

Taking this thing apart turned out to be exceedingly easy.  I used two different phillips screwdrivers to remove a bunch of screws, and everything just came out.  The only problem I ran into at all was that I had to snip the wires (using wire cutters...don't use scissors) that were connected to the heating element.

As it turned out, there were two motors inside the bread machine.  The one on the left is the motor for the cooling fan, and the one on the right is the motor for the mixing paddle.

There were also two circuit boards.  The circuit board pictured above was full of all kinds of crazy things: transistors, resistors, diodes, capacitors, two sink heats, a transformer, and a few things that I don't recognize at all.  

The second circuit board contained the LEDs, display, and a bunch of little push-buttons. If I can get enough of those buttons, I'm going to build the world's crappiest digital (musical) keyboard.  

The problem with well-made electronic devices like The Bread Machine is that I can't actually snip any of the components out because the leads will be too short to reuse.  If I desoldered everything, I'd definitely be able to reuse the parts, but it would also take me a ridiculous amount of time and energy.  I have read that it's possible to use a toaster to desolder all of the joints at the same time and then shake the pieces out.  This seems a little dangerous to me, but I am interested in giving it a shot, so I'm going to hold on to these circuit boards until I can construct a safe desoldering machine (think "Paper Jogger + Toaster + Plexicase").

The only danger I ran into when taking the Bread Machine apart was removing the power cord.  I ended up using a box cutter to slice the plastic away.  If you are tempted to use this technique, make sure that you wear safety goggles and always slice away from yourself.  Box cutters behave unpredictably when cutting things that aren't boxes, and on more than one occasion my blade has slipped and violently sliced whatever was nearby, or snapped in two and thrown a broken blade across the room.  I played it safe, and ended up with a nice power cable instead of a bloody mess.

All in all, this was a surprisingly quick and simple break, and even though a lot of the components are still trapped on a circuit board and unusable, I'm hoping that I'll be able to use that at some point in the future.

The real prize: Robot Dome!