Inventing ideas needed: got a semi-dead kettle

Perhaps something to keep a hot drink warm, e.g. for a cup of tea?

Could even make a USB powered one, I guess.


Plus all that to keep a cup of tea warm. Bit much don't you think.
 
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Where's the temperature sensor for the element located? Is it within the heatplate or somewhere submerged in the water?
 
Eggs are a bit boring, even poached ones. You could make a doughnut machine or pancake machine. I think that would be better.

Weapon wise I can't think of much unless you try heating water to create some kind of high pressure and then release it to shoot something at someone or just burn them with steam.
 
home made steamer/steam cooker?

extract Iodine from seaweed?

3 KW is more then enough.
 
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Oh no, two great ideas already :D

I like the idea of distilling moonshine from scrumped apples. I think 3 kW will anihilate both though, unless the still is on a pretty big scale :(

If you are happy enough to to a little wiring, add a dimmer switch which is used for lights, in line with the kettle cable.

This is a crude but effective way of modulating the power, you could probably reduce the heat down to 300W or so...

Try and use it on a seperate ring tho, as dimmer switches on the same ring will affect other appliances (I think!).
 
Surely if it leaks you cant use liquid in it.
I'll be taking the heating plate out the bottom and mounting it in something else. It's the kettle itself that's leaking round a join and I can't be bothered to fix it.

Where's the temperature sensor for the element located? Is it within the heatplate or somewhere submerged in the water?
On most kettles the temperature sensor is a bi-metallic strip mounted in the top of the handle. Once the water is boiling steam finds its way up there, bends the strip and it mechanically clicks the switch off. Literally that simple, quite ingenious, failsafe, and it'll destroy itself once I've taken it off ;)

Potentially a spring loaded version could let it click in and out and stop it overheating, then a timer on a relay so it can't boil dry. Could be as simple as a 555 timer controlling a relay to switch it on and off, then maybe a chopper controller, as suggested above, if it's a bit vicious at heating with 3kW :D
 
Building on the still idea.

A vaguely kettle shaped container with the hot plate in the base, no means of it switching off. A flask sitting in this. A lid with a hole in, the flask protrudes through the hole. Fill larger container with water, which you use the hot plate to maintain at boiling point. The lid prevents evaporative losses being excessive.

Alcoholic liquid in the flask. Pipe running vertically up from this, preferably glass though water cooling tubing would probably do. Need some way of keeping the water in the flask, this is why its in a flask rather than the hot plate in the liquid. The water boiling is at 100 degrees, there is a temperature drop across the glass wall, so the contents of the flask is at less than 100 degrees. You might need two concentric flasks with water between to get the inner one to around 85 degrees or so.

T junction, preferably metal, partway along the tubing. Submerge the T in a container of cold water, the arms coming over the top, the middle line runs out the base through a bulkhead fitting into a collection flask. The cold water encourages the alcohol to condense in this U shaped part of the loop. Empty this tube back into the flask somehow, a tub of cold water is not a particularly good condenser.

Can probably make the system quite compact.
 
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Are they really able to cope with 3kW?
Doubt it, most of them are rated to about 150W I think. Pretty much stuck with the 3kW I think. Was thinking about the chopper controller and I think it would need a bucket load of transistors or FETs to handle that much current. I guess I could half wave rectify it which would see approx half the power go through.
 
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