Lame Cherry Seed Sprouter

 

As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.

OK this is a project I did for myself and am not advocating that any of you nimwits try this as electricity is involved and this site said I could blow my head off if the microwave condenser still had a charge in it. As I'm posting this............my head is still attached along with ovaries.

How to Take Apart a Microwave : 18 Steps - Instructables

Be extremely careful when you want to take the magnetron apart for the diode and 2 ferro magnets, because the ceramic isolators on each end (cylindrical pieces ...

It basically is making sure it is unplugged and you take screws out of things in the way.

What I was building was a seed sprouter as without donations things are costly and I have had it with years of not getting things to sprout. Last year was a bitch due to HAARP chems in the soil retarding seeds from sprouting, so this forced an idea which has been in my mind for sometime as I used a microwave once to build an egg incubator with great results.

New microwave have security screws to keep people from taking them apart. I lost my security screw driver, so I used a vice grip to turn the screws out.

The parts I kept were the fan and the power cord. Microwave lights are shit, so I opted to buy a porcelain light socket base. I got my stuff from the farm store as Ebay was shit for parts and too expensive.

The heat in this is a lizard pad, for raising lizards. They have their own thermostat, so all is kosher with that, but it means as I was not going to chop up more wiring, that I have two plug ins running out of this sprouter.

This is the photo of it with lights on.

This is the lizard pad and the light bulb on which is a 25 watt incandescent to add additional heat. In writing this on first test of wide open, it was 104 degrees in there. Apparently I could cook lizards in this even with the vents  open. I can use this to hatch eggs as I was wondering about that.

Now here is the thing, I put two switches on this, as I did not want to run the light and the fan all the time together as this is a sprouter. The light was for after germination and the fan was to take humidity out if it was necessary or to move air if I incubated eggs in it. So I cut a hole in the side of the microwave and put in two light switches, one for each fan and light.

TL says it looks professional.

I also had to use an electric grinder to cut the slot for the lizard pad thermostat to pass through, both the interior and exterior walls.

I used a drill to open a hole which I then used a file to install the light socket. A dremel tool would most likely work better and faster.

This is the schematic of what I did. The green is the ground coming into the microwave so I did not re ground anything. The black wires are hot, the yellow neutral.

I will mention that JYG sold me a florescent light fixture that had lots of wires and twist connectors, so I used them.

The microwave with all the shit in it in motherboards and some other stuff I did not know what it was with a fuse, that got pulled, had blue, yellow, white and black wires in it. That was for them to keep track of the bell, crapper light and whatever else was lurking inside of there. So yes I have different wire colors hooked like blue and black, but to keep this simple and right, this is how it looks and works.

I just clipped the wires coming in on the power cord, and tied the neutrals together. For the hot wires, I just ran a double from the single coming in for the two switches. Just remember a switch is designed to break the circuit on the hot wires, and you do not cross hot, neutral or ground ever or things go POP or do not work at all.

My light switches only had two terminals. That seemed odd but this is Chinamart and it was simple and what I wanted.

Yes this is a dirty microwave. I came out of a salvage yard and laid in the yard here with snow on it. Door is sprung and I will have to be Inspired to keep that closed, but this does work exactly as I hoped it would.

Thermostats from water heaters is what I used for the incubator, but they run to 95 degrees and that is too hot for seed sprouting. It also is stupid to piss around wiring in thermostats when you can get a lizard pad for like 15 bucks with it's own controls.

I have read about water heaters being where people sprouted stuff, to ovens like I tried and other non starter ideas, so that is why I built this as it is enclosed, I can get the right heat I want in 80 to 85 degrees and not have to be bothered wondering if things are at the right temperature and it did not cost me a shit load of money for a plastic tray with a heating pad in it.

I plan now to get a bigger microwave and repeat this process as this one is the small size and why should I not have two seed sprouters for under 20 bucks.

Ok that' about it for this Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter project.

Nuff Said

agtG